Just Jeff's RV Page

Thermal Curtains to Isolate Cab

In the winter, Class C RVs lose a lot of heat from the cab. In the summer, a lot of heat comes in through the windshield. Not good, so we looked for ways to fix it. There are a few ways:

Add an insulated windshield cover on the outside (and/or a Reflectix cover on the inside). If you use an outside one, get one with anti-theft tabs that lock inside the doors.
Close the cab's vents...on some models, it's important to close the vents BEFORE you turn off the engine and give the vent time to close. Closing it after the engine is off won't actually cause the vent to close on my Ford E450, for example.
Hang a blanket from the cabover to stop heat transfer into the cabin. We used a fleece blanket and noticed several degrees of temperature difference between the cab and the cabin.

We wanted a nicer way to isolate the cab instead of using the fleece blanket, so I installed some thermal-backed curtains from Walmart that matched our interior.

Discussion thread here: Click

Email me with any tips and tricks you've found useful, tweaks to what I've done here, etc.!

Cab Curtains
	Here's what the RV looked like before the install.
	I bought this wall hanger kit from Walmart for about $4.50 just for the hangers pictured to the right. Walmart also had a set of four L-brackets for $1.37 that also would have worked but these will look nicer.
	I just slid the flat part of the hangers between the wall and the cab divider...no screws or anything.
	I had some 550-cord (parachute cord) on hand so that's what I used. I plan on getting some tan colored 550-cord at some point even though this color doesn't look too bad. I wanted to put some kind of elastic in there, partly to absorb the force of the kids pulling on it by accident and partly to keep the line pretty straight. I needed some pretty thick stuff so I decided to use a bungee cord by removing the hooks. I left the crimps on and used needle-nosed pliers to pull the 550-cord through, then used a figure-8 lash (aka lineman's lash) to attach the 550-cord. This will all be inside the curtain channel anyway.

	I threaded the line through the curtain channels and pushed them out of the way, then pulled it all tight and used a trucker's hitch on the other side on the bungee. The hook is just a coat hanger I installed earlier. It's not part of this project.

Here you can see the hanger with the curtains attached. On the left, the bungee assembly is inside the curtain channel here...you can kinda see the lump if you look closely. The picture on the right is the hanger on the passenger side. (The color difference is just the camera...or the photographer. The curtains are the same color.) And below you can see the finished product, open and closed! It matches our interior well enough to make my wife happy, and it will block a lot of the heat transfer. I need to add some velcro patches to keep it completely closed in the center but I only have black right now and I want it to match.

By the way, here's the windshield cover I got from Amazon.com. It's the "Camco 45231 RV Arctic White Vinyl Windshield Cover" for $24. I really wanted the one with thicker insulation that CampingWorld has on their website but it was never in stock anywhere so I just ordered this one.