Community Forums

philisweatly · 02-26-2017, 07:04 AM

Whelp we just took our RV out last few days for our first trip out! It was incredible! First time hooking everything up ourselves. Ran into a few issues that were solved. Had a small leak from our under the sink water filter which I fixed and a few other small idiosyncrasies we both figured out.

So we get back home and I didn't dump our grey water (have about 3/4 full) and didn't fully drain the water lines because it wasn't supposed to dip below freezing again but last night it did for a couple hours. Is there anything I should do/check? Is a quick freeze like that going to do harm to my lines?

1992 Fleetwood Bounder 28ft class A gas.

oscarvan · 02-26-2017, 07:12 AM

Don't think so. Hard to put numbers on it, but a few hours below freezing is not going to freeze anything hard enough to do damage.

That said....."draining the lines" is not quite the same as a proper winterization. You may want to do some searching on the subject. There is a LOT of discussion about it.

If you don't get all the water out and it freezes properly you WILL get damage.

Draining all tanks and filling the system with RV anti freeze is one way, and my favorite.

Some people swear by blowing it out with compressed air.

OLYLEN · 02-26-2017, 07:56 AM

A rule of thumb, if it freezes to above 27° or above over night and day time temps reach 40's your fine without heat. If it remains below freezing day time and overnight I set the furnace to 40° and the batteries will last a couple days. If low freezes 20° or so lots of heat or winterized.

LEN

MisterT · 02-26-2017, 08:04 AM

no worries - here in the western NC mountains we got down to about 25degrees overnight, but my two little electric space heaters in the wet bay and in the coach had no problems keeping it above freezing, though I don't think several hours below freezing is going to be an issue anyway - and I didn't drain any lines - but DID leave the water heater on, as we are on 50a here at the cabin...

normally, if I'm not going to be using the coach anytime soon, and freezing temps are in the forecast, especially over several days, I will DRAIN the line with the LowPointDrains, leaving a faucet open while draining, and drain the WaterHeater as well. Leaving several electric heaters on means that everything can weather the time very easily, even if some water is still in some lines somewhere.

garbonz · 02-26-2017, 08:26 AM

The problem is water freezing in an enclosed space. At a minimum, open all faucets, drain hot water, open low point drains if you have them.

Even a freeze, may not damage anything because the pex lines are a little bit flexible. I would not want to count on that as a steady diet tho. I would be careful using the system to make sure no lines have split. You can easily do that by turning on your pump and see if it pressurized and stops like normal.

philisweatly · 02-26-2017, 08:34 AM

Thank for replies. I was parked in front of my house during the quick frost and it only dipped to 28 F for a 2 hours and is parked getting the morning sun and is now in the low 40's. I had properly winterized the coach when we bought it in December and it looks like Tennesse won't have any long cold periods anymore this year. Our next trip isn't for a few weeks so I'll just drain my hot water heater and low point drains.

Luckily this old coach has a vented undercarriage so when running the heater it gets everywhere.

We are going to be full timing starting in June and our trip will keep us in warm weather all year.