I know, we should have it winterized

[Jerry Burks]

Anyway, we did not.

We just moved from California to Northern Colorado and used the Motorhome as a convenient temporary residence while packing, moving and unloading.

Everything went well (and accoding to weather forecast) until we came to our new home when a sudden serious freeze (like 15 degrees F) left the motorhome plumbing blocked and later the (partially filled) black and grey tanks unable to dump before we could do the winterization.

Since then it thawed and I had an opportunity to blow out all the fresh water lines with a compressor and dump the tanks. We did not fill in anti-freeze, though.

Any idea about the possible damage once we get the coach out of storage again, maybe in April?

Thanks, JB

[Colorado]

If nothing broke with the freezing you may get lucky. do you add any treatments to the black and gray water tank? If you do you might’ve gotten lucky and they played a role in preventing a solid freeze... easy enough to test. You could always add antifreeze to both tanks and the drains...as the temperature warms up the antifreeze will start to mix with the liquids in the tanks lowering the freezing temperature.

[Lake Huron]

Also, if you blew the lines out with air and you had a pipe break from freezing you should have had water spewing out of the leak, if you had one.
If you want to save a possible water mess in the spring, hook the compressor back up and pressurize the system to normal water pressure, say 50psi. Keep an eye on your pressure gauge and see if it falls off over say an hour of time. If it does, time to start listening for a leak.
Also wouldnt hurt to get a gallon of rv antifreeze and put a little in the toilet to keep the seals from drying out, dump a little in your sinks/p-ttaps and I'd get some down the drains into the tanks to keep your dump valves from being damaged.

[pconroy]

Welcome to Northern Colorado.


We've been surprised twice with temps dropping to 14*F while camping. Both times things froze up, both times thawed without incident.


Last week (or two ago) we were camping and while the pipes stayed thawed, the black tank valve froze. Now that made things interesting.

[pconroy]

Oh - and as you've found out weather could be 70*F in the morning and 7*F in the afternoon. I just have several gallons of RV Antifreeze on hand at all times.


Now, I'll spend $6 and 15 minutes to avoid the possibility of a freeze.