We’ve stayed in our fifth-wheel through one winter in Texas. Although, we did endure some colder weather, it really wasn’t too bad. There was one weekend, though, when the kids and I went out of town, leaving Dawn home alone. We didn’t really think too much of the cold weather at the time, but as it turned out, it was cold enough to freeze our water line, leaving Dawn without water for a couple of days.

After we got home, I set to work figuring out what we needed to make a DIY heated and insulated water hose for the winter. After a quick trip to Home Depot, I picked up the materials I needed to make my own. The only problem was, the cold weather season was coming to a close, so I lost my resolve. As we were leaving Texas for California, I didn’t really intend to get into very cold weather any time soon.

Then, we started the trip back to Texas for Christmas, and I started to realize that we might run into some very cold weather on our way through Arizona and New Mexico in December. I tried picking up a heated water hose from an RV dealer before we left SoCal, but they didn’t have any in stock. As we made our way through western New Mexico, we had an idea that we might be able to call an RV dealer along the way. We ended up contacting Camping World of Albuquerque who had exactly what we needed; the only problem was that they would be closed for the day before we could get there. They ended up allowing us to purchase the hose by phone, and they left it for us in a secure place so we could pick it up after hours.

That night, we stopped east of Albuquerque, and the temperature did drop pretty low as expected. Thankfully, though, it didn’t bother us at all because we had gotten our heated water hose just in the nick of time. Amazingly enough, the new hose only cost a little more than I had previously spent on all the DIY materials, and it was definitely much more compact. Check out the video to learn all about our hose and to see how we use it.