Quote:
Originally Posted by Lbatt
We plan to do some traveling this winter and wondering what others do to winterize in between trips. We're in W. Colorado, supposedly not severe cold, but still down into the teens at times. Don't want do the antifreeze thing and then have to clean it out to take a trip, then winterize again.
We're thinking of adding a couple of 1500W space heaters, on low, so would be about 1500W total , running off 120v and 20 am fuse at the house. leaving the cabinet doors open to the fresh tanks, bathroom and water heater. the black and grey are on the other side and not accessible from the inside.
And what about camping where it is cold.... but we're in the coach...does the warm ambient air inside keep everything from freezing?
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Hi Lbatt, We also live in an area that often gets into the teens during portions of the winter. We found on a previous RV that water will freeze in the pump and lines at that temperature. We were fortunate in that case, caught the problem right away and didn't have any damage to the pump, or any broken lines. Now we are very careful about winterizing. We dump any fresh water, by-pass the water heater, and open and dump the water heater. I installed the antifreeze kit into the plug that is in the wet bay, and is made for that access. I think your wet bay is the same as in our ACE 29.3. Using the antifreeze kit and water pump, we can complete a winterizing process in about 10 minutes. Place the clear tube into a jug of antifreeze, go inside, turn on the pump and start opening water taps one at a time, until each one runs pink. Then dump some antifreeze into the black and gray tanks. When we travel in the winter, it is generally not with the intent of staying in the cold, but until we reach warmer areas with the plan to stay there for a while, we travel with jugs of water inside the unit, and use antifreeze as a chaser after putting plain water into either tank. Then when we do arrive at a warmer area, it is a simple procedure to hook up to city water, and just run the taps until water is clear, then unbypass the water heater, put the plug in, and fill. Again, we can do this in about 10 minutes. Then, easy process to reverse the procedure when we return home. Or you can blow out the lines if you have the proper equipment, as was suggested by another member. We find it easier to just use the antifreeze method, because we don't have to haul out the air compressor, run it up to pressure, then drain the tank, and all that rigamarole!
I have not used the heat pads yet, as we have not done prolonged camping in really cold areas. But am fairly certain that space heaters will not keep things from freezing. Especially with the amount of lines that we have in areas outside of the coach. Our pump is in the wet bay, which even though it is the area where the heat pads are on the bottom of the tanks, I don't think that is considered a heated bay.
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