Winter Weather

The temperature inside my campervan tonight is a balmy 21 degrees centigrade, (70 degrees fahrenheit) just right for a comfortable evening and night. I'm lucky in that I'm plugged into the grid at my friends house and am eternally grateful for that as winter living is normally very difficult in a van. My campervan is really a summer vehicle but I have tried free camping in winter using firstly a gas heater then a paraffin heater. As you can imagine it didn't go well on both occasions.

The problem with gas is that the by product is water and condensation is horrendous and everything gets wet including under the mattress after a nights sleep. The paraffin heater I have is way too powerful for the size of my camper and is impossible to regulate, it's just hot! It worked brilliantly at the static caravan where I used to live up by Strumble Head lighthouse, getting a much larger space warm in about twenty minutes and staying warm hour after hour.

The other problem with gas and paraffin heaters is that you can't safely leave them on all night, so as you can imagine the teperature quickly plummeted and made for an uncomfortable night both times. Bang went that idea.

So the only way it was ever going to be possible to live in the van and get through winter was to plug into the grid and use an electric convection heater. I bought one for fifteen quid, it has two temperature settings and a thermostat so it's easy to use and makes for very comfortable van dwelling. The other day there was snow and ice outside but inside the van I was able to keep toasty warm with a nice even temperature all evening and all night.

It would be fair to say that by being plugged into the grid I'm not really living free and that's true but i'm still living in the van and I did have heart surgery six months ago so I'll take it as a given that as it's freezing outside it's ok to compromise and use electricity through the winter.