Summer and winter are sooo different when you're full-timing. You're a little more aware of the weather forecast, and a little more grateful for nice weather when it comes. :) While spring took for-e-ver to arrive this year (I mean seriously! That was a crazy-cold winter!), it's finally here. This is my first springtime in the trailer, and I've enjoyed getting ready for spring much more than I "enjoyed" preparing for winter LOL!
Some notes for next year:
- I stopped running my propane heat two or three weeks ago, but turned it on at night with the thermostat set very low, just in case. Last week I realized it had been a while since I'd heard it kick on during the night, so I turned it off. For the season. Booyah! (I can almost hear the "ching, ching" of saving money! While I'm grateful for the heat, grateful for how easy to heat my trailer is compared to some other full-timers I know, and grateful for my BJ's membership that makes my propane so affordable... I'm so excited about not having to refill my tanks as often!)
- The one thing I have not been able to make myself give up yet is my electric blanket. Which I'm totally addicted to. :( I love slipping into a warmed bed, and even if I do overheat during the night, I generally toss it off over my body pillow and snuggle. (I swear, I'm such a baby.)
- The weather has been pretty mild so far, and I've enjoyed opening all my windows and screen door. It makes the place feel so much bigger! It doesn't do much to cool everything, though, until the sun goes down. Unfortunately, the way I have the trailer placed, parallel to the house, means I can't take advantage of the breeze very well. If I wasn't limited by proximity to the sewer/water hookup, I'd rotate it by 90 degrees and take advantage of the wind.
- I have run my AC twice, once for about fifteen minutes just to cool everything down before bedtime on a very hot day, and one day when I was sick with a stomach virus, became pretty light-sensitive, and wanted the windows shut. I'm going to try to wait as long as possible before I start running it (but I'm not very heat-resistant, so we'll see).
- One thing I have been doing, though, both for my own comfort and because I worry about the girls overheating in their cage while I'm away, is to run the fan system on the warmest days. Keeping the air moving really helps keep things inside cool (especially overnight, when I shut everything up) and I enjoy having the white noise to sleep to. ;)
- I am remembering, though, how hot it got last year. There's no helping it - I basically live in a tin can. I am hoping to get my awning unrolled this year to cool the air around the windows of the main living area, but other than that, I think "beat the heat" will be a relative term.
- Final note: I haven't taken down my heated hose yet, but only because I've been busy the past several weekends. However, it's on my to-do list this weekend. I've decided I'm not going to store it as-is, as was my original plan, but disassemble the waterline, insulation, foil, and heat tape and just store the heat tape. The reason for this is that, while my setup worked really well this winter, I had to make changes several times that required ripping open the insulation and foil. Now that I have a much better idea of what to do, I'm going to trash the ripped foil and insulation (both of which are cheap, cheap, cheap at Lowes) and put it back together again next year. Hopefully next spring I'll just have to unhook both ends of my hose, drain the hose, coil it, and store it. :)
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