Ken,

Jo and I don't have a motorhome, but we were talking to a KOA campground owner and he told us of a motorhome in their campground that really racked up some heating bills.  While I think he was referring to last winter, we don't have any ideas of what the temperatures were in Oklahoma City during that period.

Now, having said that, I suggest you find an online source of information like a "brand name" owners group with a forum.  Then you can go in and read what people with the particular brand you are considering have had experiences with.

Good luck with that, and have the unit checked by a good technician.  If the unit has sit for very long, there may be some issues because of lack of use.

Terry

I would say DP's and class A's in general are more cold weather friendly than other classes of RV. They tend to have enclosed basements and water tanks. Some basements are heated by the furnace ducting and others like mine have space heaters with thermostats that kick in around 40 degrees. And yes, the colder it gets the more $$ it will cost to keep warm, just like a S&B house.

We spent one winter in Verdi NV. where it was below freezing for days and the only problem we had was the water hose. I had the hose wrapped in pipe foam and it still froze. I now carry a spare water hose that is both wrapped in pipe insulation and has a heat strip.

I used the macerator to dump so I didn't have to leave the stinky slinky out. The macerator hose is easy to deploy and then return to the water compartment, so would use it and put it back in the water compartment after dumping.

Using both furnaces we had to fill the propane tank once a month. It did snow, but we weren't going anywhere, but if we had needed to pull in the slides the snow would have been an issue with the slide toppers. I've heard they can freeze up and you would need to thaw them before being able to pull them in. If it was real cold pulling in the slides would help keep it warmer inside.

If you can put skirting around the bottom of the coach to keep the wind from blowing under the rig helps to keep the heat bill down.

Diesel fuel can be an issue as well as #2 diesel will gel if it gets cold. You would want to make sure you have #1 diesel in the tank and plug in the block heater to protect the engine.

Some of the higher end DPs are more four season since they use diesel furnace and hot water heaters plus have more insulation. These are higher end than our DP and many here think ours is high end. An uplevel Monaco, Country Coach or Newmar can handle outside temps to around zero or maybe below for extended times.

Edit: I just remembered that RVDude, who used to visit this forum, has a high end DP with an Aqua-hot (diesel furnace and hot water heater combo).  He would boondock at ski resorts in Colorado in the winter and stay warm.  Here is his website,
http://www.rvdude.com/.

-- Edited by bjoyce on Monday 1st of November 2010 10:14:38 AM

Terry: I did not answer since my only interaction with RVDude was through this forum. I know he has been to at least one RV Dreams rally so I was hoping someone who knew him would say something.

We just purchased a DP and it has double pane windows and heated basement. Previous owner used it for snow mobile tournaments in Wyoming. Dealer said it was good -10 to -20. I know that we will never find that out!

We have a 2001 Newmar Mountaire. It is 41 ft. We also tow an enclosed trailer with motorcycle(plans to get rid of trailer). I drive our 2008 Colorado behind(found out after purchase that we could not tow it 4 down and is manual(ugg) Our decision was based on months of research both on ebay-craigslist(pricing), and a couple rv websites(pros and cons of diesel and gas for fulltiming) We could not see buying a new rig-depreciation, cost, and the fact that at 40,000 miles this one is barely broke in. Read where diesel engines have lasted over 400,000 miles. The engine looked really good in this one and we saw things like extra belts in storage, all brand new batteries, new tires(would be $$ to replace), books kept neatly in hanging file folder, and the fact that they gave us 16,000 more for our B+ than what we paid 3 years ago didn't hurt. We could have bought a little cheaper on ebay but getting rid of the old is a plus to me and having them go through everything at dealer was also a plus. We did pay for an oil change and then changed the generator oil ourselves. We plan to do as much maintenance as we can in future but are going to get the 48,000 mile recommended service done at dealer. I cannot say that we bought it for the double pane windows and basement heating but we are based out of ND and will spend time there in summer.......if we don't get out of cold areas as soon as we need to I rest easy. Our last MH had frozen lines in New Mexico last year and what a pain. The main thing is to get what you want and what will work for you. We would have preferred a toy hauler but knew we wanted a motorhome and didn't want to sleep above the cab so for now......this is how we roll.