I winterized the Ventana today

[Dennis C.]

I read through the manuals and watched a few videos online before attempting to winterize the coach for the first time. Overall, it went very well. I blew the lines out with compressed air first, then I pumped pink RV antifreeze into the lines as recommended in the manual. I found the Whirlpool residential fridge to be a little bit finicky, but it got it done. It was so nice to have everything accessible in one place in the wet bay. It was much easier than my Airstream.

[Winemaker2]

Do you have a washer? And did you fully winterize including draining the sump?

[Dennis C.]

I do have a washer. I followed the instructions but I don’t recall anything about the sump. Please tell me more.

[jaydee325]

Originally Posted by Dennis C.

I found the Whirlpool residential fridge to be a little bit finicky, but it got it done.

Please provide more detail on what was finicky.

[Dennis C.]

Originally Posted by jaydee325

Please provide more detail on what was finicky.

My biggest challenge was getting all the water out of the fridge lines, particularly the drinking water fill in the door. I filled and dumped cups of water, per the instructions. I kept filling cups of water, waiting for the flow to change to antifreeze. It was slow going, and water kept coming out. I re-read the instructions and saw that I needed to remove the filter inside the fridge. Once the filter was removed, the flow was greatly increased and pink antifreeze finally flowed. I probably wasted 30 minutes slowly filling cups with water before I removed the filter. I knew that I had to remove the filter, but my mistake was waiting to remove it. I should have done that first.

I went back and read the instructions for winterizing the washer again last night. The instructions say to run the washer for about 2 minutes on the normal cycle with RV antifreeze. I did this, and then I drained the unit by re-setting it. Wouldn’t this procedure take care of the sump?

One more observation is that you really need to be ready to swap the bottles of RV antifreeze as the pump draws it from the bottles, or you’ll end up with air in the lines. It’s not a horrible problem, but it’s a little bit of a pain to prime the pump and get it going again.

[Dav L]

Originally Posted by Dennis C.

My biggest challenge was getting all the water out of the fridge lines, particularly the drinking water fill in the door. I filled and dumped cups of water, per the instructions. I kept filling cups of water, waiting for the flow to change to antifreeze. It was slow going, and water kept coming out. I re-read the instructions and saw that I needed to remove the filter inside the fridge. Once the filter was removed, the flow was greatly increased and pink antifreeze finally flowed. I probably wasted 30 minutes slowly filling cups with water before I removed the filter. I knew that I had to remove the filter, but my mistake was waiting to remove it. I should have done that first.

I went back and read the instructions for winterizing the washer again last night. The instructions say to run the washer for about 2 minutes on the normal cycle with RV antifreeze. I did this, and then I drained the unit by re-setting it. Wouldn’t this procedure take care of the sump?

One more observation is that you really need to be ready to swap the bottles of RV antifreeze as the pump draws it from the bottles, or you’ll end up with air in the lines. It’s not a horrible problem, but it’s a little bit of a pain to prime the pump and get it going again.

Put the antifreeze into a 5 gallon bucket / container and use that as the pump source.

[Winemaker2]

Originally Posted by Dennis C.

I do have a washer. I followed the instructions but I don’t recall anything about the sump. Please tell me more.

I'm familiar with my Whirlpool washer but not the Slendide.
I drain the pump sump after blowing out the lines to the MH and the washer.
On WPool you pull the cover at the base which reveals a black plastic cover at the lower right side. It unscrews to drain the pump sump and clean the filter. Water will drain into the tray and be a pain to remove so I place a sponge or microfiber towel under the drain and use a small wet shop vac to suck the drain water as I crack the cover slightly.

Replace filter and drain cover & base cover and proceed with pumping pink through lines & washer by running a short cycle with warm (hot + cold) water selected.

The advantage of draining the sump IMO is eliminates the need to run lots of pink to purge the water in the sump and it reduces risk of filuting pink to the point it isn't effective at preventing freeze damage.

Last point - 1st year I winterized mybMH / washer I used thebcheap alcohol AF I had used many years before on previous MHsvand boats (w/o washer). The following spring both water inlet solenoids were inoperable. After replacing the solenoids all was well and has been as I switched to the more expensive propylene glychol base pink AF. I had heard &;read about alcohol affect on some rubber but never had any problem until the washer problem. I'm now a believer and use the better AF in the MH.

Hope that helps

[Dennis C.]

Thanks. I’ve also got the Whirlpool unit. I ran quite a bit of pink antifreeze through it (the higher rated variant, good up to -75° F), and hopefully it’s okay. It’s well below freezing now, and it has been all day.

[Winemaker2]

Sounds like you are OK.
Too be 100% sure you could drain the sump now and remove everything that might have been diluted. Probably overkill at this point but goid info for future at least.