Hey, I'm Brock, I'm Tay, and after two winters in our base camp full-time, we have some thoughts about whether it is

truly a four-season trailer. If you look on Airstream's website, it says that all of their

trailers, including the basecamp, are four-season ready. They're able to be lived in summer, winter, fall, spring, but

we don't think that's really the truth. Four-season is a little subjective. I wonder what their winters look like.

Maybe Southern California winters? Yeah, it can definitely handle winter to a certain degree, and last winter we did

just fine in it. This winter has been a little bit more challenging because we're in Utah, where it's a little bit

colder. We think this will probably be our last winter in it because it's just a little too inconvenient. We'll walk you

through the good and the bad of an Airstream in the winter, and hopefully, some of these things are things that you can

look out for, just be aware of if you're planning on getting a trailer, definitely with the Basecamp 20X. Some of these

issues could be dealt with, but it would cost a lot and it would definitely take some more man-hours to fix some of these

things. Some of these things were just totally unexpected. Yeah, and I think also, you know, we are in it 7 days a week for

3 to 4 months straight. If you're just doing a weekend trip or something like that, it might not be as big of a deal to

you. So we just want to give you our experience, and then you take what you need from that. The first issue that we

want to bring up is that a lot of the pipes and plumbing are exposed beneath the trailer and they're not heated, so

it's really easy for them to freeze, especially, of course, if there's something in them. They're going to say

on the website, and we've even gotten some comments like, "You must not know the specs because the pipes are"

prevented from freezing with the propane heater, and the tanks are heated, yes, but not the pipes on the outside of the

trailer. The pipes on the inside are fine if you have the propane heater on; the tanks are pretty much okay if you have

the tank heaters on, but at the bottom of the tank it goes down to this little pipe, or two little pipes, so that you can

empty your tanks. Those are not protected; they're not shielded from wind or anything like that, and that's where

things freeze. Also, there are a lot of levers and little pulleys that are on the outside of the trailer, and most of

those are kind of cheaply made; they're made with plastic, and they freeze as well. So normally, even on a 70° day,

they're hard to open and they require quite a bit of force to unscrew or to pull out. And so now, with them being

frozen and with it being super cold, that plastic is really brittle. We've broken a few things, and there are a few valves on

the outside of the tanks that we haven't been able to even get unscrewed. We experienced something similar last year,

but our temps weren't as severe last year, and we had some warmer days where those would kind of melt, and then we

would, you know, take that opportunity to empty the tanks. But this year we've been... Another thing you brought up is the

pipes inside the trailer; they won't freeze if you have the propane running, but that means you have to keep the

propane running at all times, and you can't have the propane running while you're driving because that's not very

safe. And if you're like us, driving through freezing temperatures, it can get really cold inside. In fact, our

The thermostat said it got down as low as 26 degrees inside the trailer when we were driving from Southern California to Heber, Utah.

And it was probably only below freezing for a few hours, but that was enough that it could have frozen those pipes. Another

thing to consider is propane is expensive. The base camp specifically can only house two 20-lb propane tanks, and

you can go through that really fast in the winter, especially if it's cold out, with cooking and heating. Because the

Airstream is not insulated at all; you lose heat fast when you're using it to heat the trailer.

This thing is essentially just a big aluminum frame with no insulation in the walls. So something that we've done, and

we've done a video on this, is we've added reflectix to all of these windows so that the heat doesn't escape the

windows as much. But that's really the only place where you can insulate. Technically, I guess we've heard some

people have insulated like behind some of the cabinets, but that's pretty expensive and that's a really big job.

And even that wouldn't make a huge difference. So you lose heat really fast in the trailer. Speaking of the reflectix

and insulating the windows, because last winter we weren't hooked up to power most of the time, we were relying on just

the propane to heat this place. That meant that we had to be really strict about how we used the propane, and we

couldn't ever really take down the windows like they are right now. So even on a beautiful sunny day last year, we

for the most part kept the windows rolled up because we were really just trying to conserve the heat as much as

we could. We just couldn't afford to. The space that we did have insulated, exposed that and allowed heat to escape even more.

So when we were inside the trailer, it was very dark and closed, and we never had the windows open, which made winter kind

of tough. When you're hooked up to power, you can use the AC unit, which does make it really warm in here. I think we've got

it up to 86° even with it being sub-30 outside. The one drawback of the AC is it

is super dry; it's super dry and it's super loud, and it doesn't keep your pipes warm because they're under the

bench. It's very, very cold under there. So pros and cons, right? The AC works really well; oh, I'm hooked up, I'll just use that,

but then you run the risk of your pipes getting too cold, and if you run it overnight, be ready to wake up with a

very sore throat the next morning. Fortunately, we're hooked up to power this winter quite a bit more because we

learned from last winter, but it makes it very, very dry, and the propane makes it very, very humid, which is a whole another

thing. Last winter, when we were in the Pacific Northwest, where it's a little bit more humid than here in Utah, we were

constantly dealing with the walls just dripping condensation; like it was so wet in here at all times with just the

propane running. There's no real way to get rid of that moisture. Right now it's about 30% humidity, and we've had the AC

off for about an hour. I think it's gotten down to—what does that say?—15%

humidity. So it does get very, very dry in here with the AC. Another issue with winter camping in the Basecamp 20X is

just the bathroom situation. There's no way to get heat in there, so it's always very, very cold in there. Just makes going

to the bathroom—if you do use the bathroom in the winter—it's it's a challenge; it's awful; it's like brutally

Cold. I would avoid it if I could because it was just so cold in there. You could leave the bathroom door open and let

the heat go in there, but the bathroom door takes up nearly the full width of the alley through the middle of the

air stream. It's just really inconvenient and really annoying. This year we're able to use our bathroom for

about a week or two, and then everything froze. And in Utah, it's just way too cold.

It's not thawing; we haven't had a day above 24 degrees. So we can no longer use our

bathroom because it's going to start getting full, and we want to save that for like emergency situations or middle-of-the-night situations.

Yeah, we just don't want to push it and put our black tank at 100%. Also, I want to bring up

that some people have said, you know, you can like wrap or insulate some of the pipes that are on the outside. And while

for some people that does work, I'm sure it was 4 this morning when we woke up, and I just don't think that that would

necessarily work. Yeah, I don't know how much that's going to help, and then especially if we're driving, which on our

way here we were driving through 15° weather for 4 or 5 hours. I don't know if

the tape would help that much. We've tried pouring boiling water down into the tanks to try and heat

everything up. There's like a full jug of antifreeze, maybe more. Like, we have tried everything. The pipes just, we

can't get those to release. Some of the good things with winter camping in the Airstream Basecamp is it handles

phenomenally in slush and snow. I'm not really an expert, but I think part of it

is that it's only on two wheels and it's so lightweight, it's just a lot easier to

drag through. It also has off-roading wheels and a little bit more clearance, so it's just better equipped

for driving through that. We've always felt really, really safe on even some sketchy roads. We've been in four feet of snow

and been able to pull it out, so in that sense it's really awesome. I will say the fact that the propane automatically

turns itself on once it gets below a certain temperature, that's a nice feature. Sunny days like today, it's not

too bad. Of course, today's a freezing cold sunny day, but when it's sunny and not 5° outside, these windows, because

they're tinted, they do absorb quite a bit of heat and light, and it's not too terrible. It's really awesome being

able to wake up at a ski resort. I love that it's small, so we can take it pretty

much anywhere, and it works really well for us. But those are just some things that we want you to be aware of before

you commit to winter camping in the Basecamp, because there might be a trailer that's more equipped for that. I would

say if you're in 30° weather, you're good; it's going to be definitely doable. Once

you start getting down to like the teens and single digits, it gets a little bit tough. If you're doing a

weekend trip or even just a week-long trip, I definitely think it would be easier. We're in freezing temps

for so long, and we're not able to empty our tanks and stuff like that; it's a little bit tough. It's still our choice

after the first year, and we're doing it this year. There are amazing pros and there are some cons; we just want to

Be honest about the full reality of what it's like living in an Airstream basecamp. We did a lot of research.

There just aren't a lot of people that use their trailers or RVs in the winter, let alone an Airstream, let alone

an Airstream Basecamp 20X. So we just want to put that information out there to help you make the best decision for

you. Thank you so much for watching! If you enjoyed this video, leave us a like and a comment down below, and don't

Airstream Basecamp 20x Winter Camping - 4 season trailer

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