To Drain the Hot Water Heater or Not?

[Camper_bob]

Since I rarely know the next time the trailer will be out of storage, I drain as much water as I can before I store it every time. I go just short of "winterizing" it. If it's over winter, of course, I drain all the water and winterize with air.

Sometimes it's less than 2 weeks, sometimes it's more than two months before I get the trailer back out again. I figure this way, I always have "fresh" water in my rig. The first time I stored it, I left water in the lines, and it took quite a while to get the old, stagnant water out, and until it was all gone, it was terrible. But it wasn't a moldy smell, it was plastic. The water had a horrendous plastic taste/smell to it. I assume this was from that water sitting in the lines during some sweltering Texas heat. So that's when I decided I would drain it all every time. Never had a problem since.

As others have said, make sure there's water in the tank before you turn it on.

As far as "filling" the tank after storage, that's simple. Just make sure you drain and rinse any anti-freeze before you reverse any bypass (if you bypassed the tank before storage, I don't if I'm not winterizing) and fill your fresh tank and turn on the pump, or just connect to city water. The tank will fill immediately when a water source is available, and the tank is not bypassed, and you don't have to run a faucet for that to happen. The air you get when you first turn on a faucet comes from the lines, very little, if any from the tank. I will usually lift the handle on the pressure release valve to let any extra air out, but that's not even necessary.