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Old 08-13-2018, 11:20 AM   #1
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DX3 performance in extreme temperatures

Been meaning to post this for a little while now. Seems today is my day for posting so here it goes:

In the past 6 mo I’ve had my DX3 at both ends of the temperature extremes. We saw -15 F in Breckinridge in Feb and just hit 115 F a couple of days in Las Vegas. Figured it’d be useful to share a few observations for those who are curious or thinking about doing similar.

Short story: the coach performed admirably in both cases. Inside temps will vary throughout the coach and you’re not going to maintain a comfy 72 degrees in either case, but we found both to be very livable with ourselves and two dogs.

Now for some more details:

Cold
The biggest considerations for cold were heating the front cab area and the wet bay. Generally we were able to stay comfortable throughout the coach with the heat set at 65.

The bedroom had absolutely no issue keeping up especially with two adults and two dogs. Putting the aqua hot under the bed is pure genius, results in basically a pre warmed bed. The window side runs noticeably cooler and we chose to arrange ourselves accordingly.

The living room has a bit more trouble keeping up. During the day when the sun was out and temps got above 0 it was fine. The dinette in the slide was definitely the coldest at any given time. Overnight there’s a decent amount of heat loss from the cab. Our furthest forward cozy is under the sink so we opted to put an electric space heater at the front of the cab. This helps a ton with evening out the heat. I believe they were going to add a cozy further forward, maybe one of the newer owners can comment. All in all it’s nothing some slippers, sweat shirts and blankets can’t handle. Another great design feature is all the aqua hot lines are run in the same cavities as the water lines so there’s no worry about the heat from the living areas making it behind the cabinets to keep the water lines from freezing. Always warm and toasty when I open a cabinet.

The last area was the wet bay. In preparation for this I’d already run a 3rd thermostat down there with a dedicated set of wires to control the cozy that feeds the bathroom and the wet back. In other cooler weather camping I’d noticed that since the bedroom is so strong it doesn’t heat nearly enough for the wet bay in colder temps. Even though its an uninsulated bay, I’m confident the aqua hot has enough BTUs to pump into the wet bay, just a matter of monitoring and doing such. Unfortunately my thermostat placement was too far from the water hose reel and too close to the heat output. Even set at 60 it still allowed a great temp differential across the bay to where the water hose (at the bottom of the bay) would freeze if it got below 0. My plan is to route a second output from the cozy to the other side of the bay where the water hose is and move the thermostat to the middle of the bay behind the sanicon. I believe this will result in a much more even heat distribution as well as have the thermostat calling for more heat.

At the pinnacle of it all (the -15F night) the utility power transformer blew and we lost power about 3am (This was in a campground of probably 400 sites, half of which are cabins all with electric heat….what a mess!). I woke to no water (uh oh) at about 530am. Temp in the living room was 55F. My space heater had sucked my batteries dry (had to use the boost to get the generator started) and of course the heated water hose and heat trace on the water hookup had gone off so everything froze. In this stressful situation it was nice to have the cozy’s still running on 12V and keeping the place livable.

Hot
Not nearly as much to talk about with the heat. We were in a campground in Las Vegas that had absolutely no shade. It was windy so awning use to shade one side of the RV wasn’t really an option either. We did keep all blinds on the sun side drawn to help out as much as we could. Again you’re not going to keep the place at 72 when its 115 out, but at the same time I was pretty impressed it didn’t become an oven inside.

What we saw was again the bedroom was much easier to keep under cooler. We ran between 80 and 85 in the bedroom at the peak heat of the day. Most days we’d retreat to the bedroom around 3 because of this, and it felt great when comparing to 115.

The living room strugged more but didn’t get much higher than 90 (maybe we saw 92 one day) but our weather station is mounted on the entertainment center with the switches so its near a wall and pretty high. Again temperature differential. I’d estimate the average temp in the living room was 85-90 depending on where you sat. Again the dinette in the slide was cooking to the point you could feel the heat radiating off the walls/windows. The kitchen and the couches were pretty comfortable and when coming in from outside even 90 felt amazing. We did put our dyson fan/heater in the hallway to try and pull the extra cold our out of the bedroom/bathroom into the living room. It seemed to help as well as just helping keep air moving around.

We were actually stuck caring for an injured dog during this time so we spent WAY more time in the RV during the day than we’d planned. It was a great test/experience to have and I was very glad to find that it was completely livable (again with proper dress and expectations) even in this extreme heat.

Overall I’m very impressed with how this coach has handled such extreme temps. I take comfort in knowing it’ll handle whatever we throw at it and give us a comfortable place to live while we do it.
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Old 08-13-2018, 07:47 PM   #2
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Great informative post
We didn’t think to use our Dyson fan in our unit, now we know [emoji1303]
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Old 08-13-2018, 08:00 PM   #3
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Yes very informative and I have 3 things.

1) Im a Mtn guy so I dont want to go anywhere its 115 degrees..

2) Im a Mtn guy so I dont want to go anywhere its 0 degrees.

3) What the heck is a cozy???

PS:
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Old 08-13-2018, 08:43 PM   #4
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I run a small fan in the bedroom to blow the cool air into the front of the RV, Helps a lot.
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Old 08-13-2018, 08:46 PM   #5
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Yes very informative and I have 3 things.

1) Im a Mtn guy so I dont want to go anywhere its 115 degrees..

2) Im a Mtn guy so I dont want to go anywhere its 0 degrees.

3) What the heck is a cozy???

PS:
FYI: this is a cozy
https://aquaheatpartswarehouse.com/c...heat-exchanger
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Old 08-13-2018, 09:07 PM   #6
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Cozy = the silly name Aqua hot gives the heat exchangers. Swore I’d never actually even call them that.

and yeah ... Vegas in July is not recommended lol
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Old 08-14-2018, 08:36 AM   #7
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Cozy = the silly name Aqua hot gives the heat exchangers. Swore I’d never actually even call them that.

and yeah ... Vegas in July is not recommended lol
lol...see. Everyone made fun of me when I called them that, but that's what they call them. I have now resorted to calling them "heat exchanger"...but people still look at me funny and say "you mean cozy?".
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Old 08-14-2018, 08:57 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FOURWHL View Post
Cozy = the silly name Aqua hot gives the heat exchangers. Swore I’d never actually even call them that.

and yeah ... Vegas in July is not recommended lol
LOL. I thought maybe it was your wife..
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Old 08-14-2018, 09:34 AM   #9
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lol...see. Everyone made fun of me when I called them that, but that's what they call them. I have now resorted to calling them "heat exchanger"...but people still look at me funny and say "you mean cozy?".
Further evidence you just can’t win...
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Old 08-14-2018, 09:35 AM   #10
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as if we needed any further evidence.
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Old 08-15-2018, 06:28 AM   #11
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Old 10-25-2018, 07:20 PM   #12
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Where and how do you install a "cozy" we had a 2018 DX3 and are going to spend the winter in the mountains of AZ. maybe teens? do you think we need it? we have the Aquahot.
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Old 10-25-2018, 09:44 PM   #13
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If you are referring to the interior then you are OK. If you are trying to get heat into the wet bay that is a bit of a project. I recall a thread many months ago on the subject. We have the fireplace and diesel aquahot and stay very toasty.
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Old 10-26-2018, 06:28 AM   #14
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I didn’t add any cozy’s. Just put the one for the bathroom/wet bay on its own thermostat so it’ll cycle more as needed.

If you’ve got the fireplace I bet you don’t need a space heater either
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Old 07-16-2020, 10:22 AM   #15
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Just thought I'd chime in here with a quick update:

In addition to the thermostat in the wet by I've also since added a small space heater. Its nice insurance for the REALLY cold days as it can pump put more than enough heat to keep things from freezing. That said in my case, it causes the bathroom heat not to run which on a cold morning is not a great thing. I found the happy medium to be using it as a fan to circulate air in the wet bay. This kept things at the bottom of the bin from freezing while still allowing the bathroom cozy to run, in most cases resulting in a nice toasty bathroom in the morning.
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Old 07-16-2020, 12:00 PM   #16
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I will also note we have made some changes as well.

1. We have a dedicated T-stat and "cozy" for the utility bay. That should help
2. We have since gone to "azdel" substrate on the exterior sidewall in a 3.6mm thickness The thinner stuff was not cutting it (2.7), but even the thinner stuff is R2 over what Lauan provides.
3. We have also changed to Dow Blue foam, which is a higher R-value than the white foam we were using.

I think they are still working on the front Cozy...but I just brought that up again in staff to expedite that process. I know we added more FACING the front area, but I wanted one added to the bottom of the tower where the sub-woofer used to be.

We are also developing a "cab curtain". I liked the one the we developed for the Xplorer package that I asked them to make one for all of them. If you are not going to swivel the front seats, you just flip this thing down and it velcros tight to the wing wall. Completely closes off the cab, but with zippered access. So if you put up the reflective shades AND the cab curtain...should have less heat loss.

So as admirably as it performed...I think it should be even better today and going forward.

We're spending this weekend in a rig...only 90, but we'll see where we have "hot spots"

Also, "slide in" if its really hot or cold...that helps a ton.
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Old 07-16-2020, 12:24 PM   #17
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Brian— getting ready to cross Texas in this heat—

When did you change to the Azdel substrate? Ours is a DX3 2020, purchased Oct, 2019.

If possible when you mention changes, improvements; it would be helpful if you could add a date it took effect.

Thanks, Gerry
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Old 07-16-2020, 12:26 PM   #18
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Awesome updates! I'd love to check these out in person when I'm in town, especially the insulation.

You guys may want to look at a dedicated fan of some sort in the wet bay also. It was night and day the difference it made circulating air in the bay so that the thermostat doesn't prematurely kick off, when in fact the hose reel is getting dangerously cold.

The curtain should help immensely in extreme temps. We put up some of that shink plastic made for house windows over the windows while we were in breck for 2 weeks and it seemed to help just having that pocket of air. Having the whole cab isolated would surely improve things.
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Old 07-16-2020, 12:41 PM   #19
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Brian— getting ready to cross Texas in this heat—

When did you change to the Azdel substrate? Ours is a DX3 2020, purchased Oct, 2019.

If possible when you mention changes, improvements; it would be helpful if you could add a date it took effect.

Thanks, Gerry
Ohh...that's a terrible idea. We do lots of mid-model year changes. Sometimes we will run a proto to see if it works and there might be some without in that gap. I think that gets me in lots of "well you said" trouble

I can confirm for sure, it is in the 2021 model year. It is in the 2020 Isata 3, but I am not 100% sure when we made the change in the M2 Trucks.
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Old 07-16-2020, 12:45 PM   #20
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Awesome updates! I'd love to check these out in person when I'm in town, especially the insulation.

You guys may want to look at a dedicated fan of some sort in the wet bay also. It was night and day the difference it made circulating air in the bay so that the thermostat doesn't prematurely kick off, when in fact the hose reel is getting dangerously cold.

The curtain should help immensely in extreme temps. We put up some of that shink plastic made for house windows over the windows while we were in breck for 2 weeks and it seemed to help just having that pocket of air. Having the whole cab isolated would surely improve things.
We have a 12V back up fan that we use on the Xplorer package. We have talked about expanding that package.
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