SOLAR

It is pretty much useless during the short winter days… we got maybe 10-20Ah charge total from solar during the whole week (guesstimate). Even on a sunny day, mid-day, we got almost nothing coming in. We still cleared the solar panels from the snow that fell overnight and this is fairly easy to do with a ladder. This shows the importance of being able to charge while driving. We went with a 30A smart charger; I wish we went with 50A-60A charger (like the Sterling Power Battery-to-Battery charger) to charge faster (shorter drives). Also, we noticed that the smart charger will reduce the charge rate as the SOC is getting closer to 100%; it really take a long time to charge the battery from 80% to 100%. (see our Solar Panels Installation Post and our Electrical System Design Post)

POWER CONSUMPTION

We found that we use a bit more power in winter. Days are shorter, so we use more lights. We want to prevent the interior of the van from freezing (water supplies, beer bottles explosions…), so the heater runs continuously and draw around 1.7A approx on average 24h/24h (this varies a lot with the outside temps). The duty cycle of the fridge is around 10%, compared to around 35% in summer.

WEBASTO HEATER

We got nights where the temps went down to -15F (-25C). The Webasto was able to maintain the temperature inside the van. However, it takes a long time (1-2 hours) to raise the temperature from, let’s say, 40F to 65F. On very cold nights, the heater was working on High mode continuously. The 3.7 gasoline engine heat up quite fast on idle; it could be used to raise the temperatures faster. (see our Webasto Installation Post)

INSULATION

All the Thinsulate was installed for the trip. The ceiling and one of the wall was finished; the other wall still had the metal exposed. We could feel a HUGE difference between the finished wall VS the other. The finished wall (thinsulate + ez-cool + wood paneling) was not cold to the touch. The unfinished wall was freezing near the floor and was sending us cold draft. This trip gave us confidence about our insulation choice. (see our Thinsulate Installation Post)

TRACTION

No surprise here, the Transit is not an off-road vehicle (we have the Limited Slip). It drives really well on snowy roads, but things get more complicated in ski resort parking lots and such. We found out that a semi-hard-pack snow layer over an ice layer will make the Transit rather useless. We did not get stuck, we went wherever we wanted, but we could feel the limitation of traction. We carried snow chains just in case.