Date:         Tue, 6 Dec 1994 08:39:40 -0700 (MST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Stuart Hutton <hutton@poly.oscs.montana.edu>
Subject:      Re: Keeping warm(er) while driving

> I did something exactly like this in my last '67 bus.  I used a piece
> of heavy canvas, and cut an hemmed it to fit the curve of the roof, and
> used twist-fasteners to put it up with, so I could easily take it down.
> This made a huge difference in the heat in the front!
On a related thread, (you might notice that I think about keeping warm a
lot these days ... Montana has suddenly become quite cold), my wife and
I recently made some insulated window coverings for our vanagon.  
What we did is to go to the salvation army and find the biggest, thickest
quilt that we could.  The pile is on the order of 1/2 inch thick.
We then washed the quilt a lot (sometimes salvation army stuff can smell
pretty bad).  We sewed velcro onto the curtins which surround the back 
sleeping area near the top and measured the distance down to the bed for
each piece. We measured and cut the quilt (and later sewed it closed along
the cuts).  In this way, we produced 4 pieces, three of which fit between
the curtins and the windows and the 4th hangs from the top down to cover
the stove top.  Finally, we took an old sleeping bag and hung it from the
top bed down to cover up the foot of the bed.
What we noticed was this:  the air gets stuffy pretty quickly.  But, by
running the little fan (which I described earlier) we were able to
replace the air in the sleeping area without problem.  Well, there was
one little problem:  the propane almost finished towards the morning
which meant that the fridge did not produce as much heat in the morning
as it had earlier.
I did some measurements, actually, to give an estimate of the temperature
difference one can expect from this arrangement.  Immediately outside the
enclosure, I found at least a 10 degree drop in temperature.  In addition,
although the temperature was quite low outside our vanagon, the inner temp.
remained at least a comfortable 40 degrees throughout the night.  I believe
the outside temperature was on the order of 10 degrees that night. 
If you make these things for your camper, I'd say that it is difficult to
sew the velcro (I went through lots of needles on this thing) and the velcro
on the rear windows probably should be cut into small pieces rather than having
long pieces since that makes it difficult to open the rear curtins.  We also
would never sleep in this enclosure without sleeping bags but it did produce
a comfortable evening.
Stuart Hutton (hutton@poly.oscs.montana.edu) 1982 diesel vanagon camper