First overnighter - was cold.

[Monty6]

Solo trip to the Gower on Tuesday/Wednesday. Camp site at Llangennith. A cracking bike ride, a walk on what was left of the beach (tide in..) and a freezing night in the van as I slept up top to see what it would be like. Frost on windscreen in morning (6:00 am.)

Fab first overnighter..Loving the van. Me, Mrs and the dog off to Shrophsire for trip next week.

 

[jts46]

Why did u not use the heater?

 

[Monty6]

Heater? What heater.

No. I wanted to try it without. Didn't realise how cold it was going to be overnight.
Will know better next time.

 

[kave]

The Cali gets surprisingly cold at night, I would say the inner temperature is 4-5 C degrees over the outside temp after a few hours, ie -2C outside = 3 C inside which is quite cold. I often turn off the heater at arround 23:00 in bed and wakes up at 0:40 freezing like hell and turns it back on again. On our recent ski trip I had the heater on 24/7.

 

[Hotel California]

We had nights below zero last week on our Poland an Tsjechie trip , had a small electric heater on during the night as we had hook-up at campsites , otherwise i sure putted the aux-heater on low during the night .
Heater is essential , you are sleeping next to tentcanvas , could gets throug .

 

[Palm]

Keep on experimenting, each of us must find our own routines and the pros and cons with different configurations. I prefer the top bed as it is cooler but its not noice isolated in the same way than the car bed. I prefere to have a "two room" configuration than a single room. I usually run the heater on level 3 or 4 below 10 C. Its nice to climb down to a worm living room and make breakfast in the morning.

 

[Hotel California]

Guess you guys op north are a bit more used to the cold , @Palm at the Hannover meet you where sitting outside making coffee while we where inside with the heater on....

Myself i can get allong with the cold pretty good , but with the wife it's a bit diffrent , she has cold feet in bed even in the summertime

 

[OCCALI]

Solo trip to the Gower on Tuesday/Wednesday. Camp site at Llangennith. A cracking bike ride, a walk on what was left of the beach (tide in..) and a freezing night in the van as I slept up top to see what it would be like. Frost on windscreen in morning (6:00 am.)

Fab first overnighter..Loving the van. Me, Mrs and the dog off to Shrophsire for trip next week.

View attachment 21126

I live in Langland ( gower ) we had no frost that night. Great pic. Awesome van.

 

[Monty6]

Was only a light frosting on the screen, to be fair. Not quite Arctic conditions. Excellent starry sky in the early hours. Think I need a better sleeping bag as well. Will experiment with the heater though.

 

[GrannyJen]

For me personally, I can see no merit in being cold. Heater on.

 

[hirsty]

Keep the lid down when it's cold, makes an amazing difference. I slept upstairs once & couldn't bear the pendulum motion (or the campsite noise in the morning! - it's like a massive reverse gramophone listening horn) ...

 

[Ksar-el-kebir]

I'm in Morocco now just returned from Sahara. Can't say I had that problem!

 

[Amarillo]

For me personally, I can see no merit in being cold. Heater on.

I could happily live and sleep without the heater, even if outside it was -20C, I'd just wear an extra layer or two - Mrs Amarillo, on the other hand, would not be without the heater.

 

[CYCLOPATH]

For me, heater in one at night....is just right....if I have the roof up
But if the roof is down, I might have the heater in in the evening, but need to turn it off once snuggled down under the duck down

 

[CYCLOPATH]

Nice

Solo trip to the Gower on Tuesday/Wednesday. Camp site at Llangennith. A cracking bike ride, a walk on what was left of the beach (tide in..) and a freezing night in the van as I slept up top to see what it would be like. Frost on windscreen in morning (6:00 am.)

Fab first overnighter..Loving the van. Me, Mrs and the dog off to Shrophsire for trip next week.
Nice van...i do notice you have the window open ..that tends to make it cooler.....

 

[Sandyvan]

We sleep down stairs, and if cold or noisy pull the inner roof down even if the elevating tops up.

 

[Monty6]

Thank you for the helpful, hopefully humerous, advice about closing windows when it gets cold. Photo taken near sunset after cooking my dinner.

 

[GillianC]

We sleep down stairs, and if cold or noisy pull the inner roof down even if the elevating tops up.

Do the same. Makes a huge difference to the temperature and then easy to put heater on, push the bed up then dive under the covers again until it warms up!

 

[Monty6]

Yep, agree. We slept downstairs with roof up, top bed down & shutter closed last week. Much better.

 

[Sp0_0k]

The Cali heater is rather crap at heating the tent. You can make sauna below and comfortable up in the tent.
Definitely, need to use a tube mod diverting the warm air in direction of a windshield when sleeping in a tent.
We are using small electric heater positioned below but directed to the windshield and all the warm air goes to a tent.

 

[sbmcd]

Was only a light frosting on the screen, to be fair. Not quite Arctic conditions. Excellent starry sky in the early hours. Think I need a better sleeping bag as well. Will experiment with the heater though.

Better bags will solve your problem, we use winter bags when it is cold even at sub zero you can be snug in your bag with no heater.

 

[Velma's Dad]

Better bags will solve your problem, we use winter bags when it is cold even at sub zero you can be snug in your bag with no heater.

Yes. You need to look carefully when buying sleeping bags, they tend to be very optimistic when describing 'comfort ratings'. You do tend to get what you pay for and the cheaper bags economise on fill and may have cold spots.

If you're buying just for use in the van (ie little chance the bag will get very wet) a down-filled bag will probably be better for you than synthetic fill, IMO.

(Actually though we prefer a good quality goose down duvet in the the van, I only use sleeping bag for camping out.)

 

[Amarillo]

Actually though we prefer a good quality goose down duvet in the the van

We have just been discussing this very thing.

We have a wonderful 13.5 tog down duvet that splits into a 4.5 tog and 9 tog duvet. Ben (age 3) and I sleep up top with the 4.5 tog, and Mrs Amarillo and Jack (age 2) sleep downstairs with the 9 tog. Ben and I are perfectly happy with the 4.5 tog, but Mrs Amarillo is concerned that 9 tog is insufficient and wants the full 13.5 tog to keep her warm during the summer months in the arctic. I guess Ben and I will have to make do with the dogs' blanket, and the dogs make do with nothing.

 

[TwoDogs]

We've never been cold enough to need the heater on at night and we always* sleep upstairs, year round. Maybe the Isoptop makes a big difference. If its cold in the morning, just hit the remote and let the heater do it's thing for 30 mins. Couldn't face the hassle of having to move everything to use the downstairs bed

*we slept downstairs once in a howling gale when the noise of the rain was so loud we couldn't sleep

 

[sbmcd]

Yes. You need to look carefully when buying sleeping bags, they tend to be very optimistic when describing 'comfort ratings'. You do tend to get what you pay for and the cheaper bags economise on fill and may have cold spots.

If you're buying just for use in the van (ie little chance the bag will get very wet) a down-filled bag will probably be better for you than synthetic fill, IMO.

(Actually though we prefer a good quality goose down duvet in the the van, I only use sleeping bag for camping out.)

Down is great for being warm, light weight and packing small, we use these for backpacking, in the van weight and size is not so critical so we use cheaper synthetic fill bags (winter or summer ones), they get used a lot so it means they need cleaned regularly being synthetic allows them to be stuck in the washing machine at home or at a laundrette on extended trips abroad when they get a bit wiffy! Down generally requires specialist cleaning.