Wet bay, water pipes freeze protection wisdom?

[Rustynuts]

Originally Posted by GHen

The valves on the control panel side of the wet bay could be a weak point. Where the outdoor shower fixture is located. I’m sure it get some heat from the pass through storage, but...

I wonder if a insulation pad like the ones that fit in the ceiling vents or in the skylight would work. Cut one the same size as the control center bay, stuff it in and close the pass through.

Just a thought.

I thought the same thing and when I added heat from the furnace to the wet bay it drops into the bay from the passenger side and then is directed over to the drivers side to the back of the valve panel. I have a thermometer that has 3 remote sensors and one is attached to the back of the panel to monitor mine.

[Flyingaggie]

I'll give my experience with this. I use my 34.5BHTS 5er (and another brand bumper pull we had before) every winter for ski trips in both CO and UT. I've never winterized my trailers. It takes some work to do on your part, and YMMV, but I've never had a frozen line or tank. This is with temps for a week straight with lows of -42F and highs of -8F.

There's 5 products you'll need:
1) EasyHeat Heat Trace Cable (runs on 120V) https://amzn.to/2XGECmR (Exactly the stuff I used)
2) The cable connector kit for the trace cable: https://amzn.to/33f2QWy
3) Tank heaters (12 or 120V, your choice. I used 12V). Multiple brands But something similar to this: https://amzn.to/35ur4NU
4) Standard foam pipe insulation from your local hardware/big box store.
5) Extra circuit breakers and electrical wiring (if you want things on their own circuits like I did). I used 20a breakers and 20a wiring so I had some head room.

The EasyHeat (brand name) cable, make sure it's the silver braided stuff as in the link above, is self regulating throughout the entire link and is safe on PEX, PVC, etc. It can be wrapped over and over itself without worry of burnout like you get with the normal pipe heating systems you use for metal water lines. It comes with instructions on how tight you need to warp the pipes to get protection to the temps you want. My trailers were wrapped to handle down to -62F. Again, in a week of -42F lows and -8F highs, I never had a frozen line and that was in a trailer without heat going into that underbelly on the first trailer.

Tank heaters are pretty self-explanatory. On the first trailer I wired it directly into 12V system. On the 5er, I used a 300W 12v power supply running off the 120 system on it's own circuit breaker. I run all the heat trace cable on it's own

I did the work myself and both my trailers took me roughly 4 days from dropping the coroplast belly to reinstalling the coroplast. That wasn't necessarily working full days either.

The nice thing is you can run a single length between twin hot/cold runs, taping the heat trace cable sandwiched between the two lines and then putting the foam pipe insulation over that. With that done and running, the 1/2 PEX is good down to -65ish. For bigger lines, you'll have to spiral wrap the 2" and 3" lines at the intervals suggested by the manual, depending on how low of a temp you expect to be your worst. The lower the temp you're protecting to, the closer the spiral has to be. After the wraps are done, you either use the foam pipe insulation (you can use 2 of the 3/4" pipe foam around 2" water line) or regular insulation on the 3" lines.

If your tank valves are at the tanks, you won't really need to trace and insulate from the out side of the valve to the exit of the trailer. With tank heaters, the tank valves shouldn't freeze. However, I don't trust that exclusively, so I wrapped the valves with the trace cable with several figure eights around the valve to ensure it's protected.

I've never worried about above floor line as I know I have a furnace for that. If I have water lines that run along an outside wall above the floor, I would insulate those just to be safe. I've never used under pinning either. I've relied entirely on my engineering and never had a freeze.

Both trailers, I used between 110ft and 140ft of the cable to cover everything to my satisfaction. Out of all that cable total amp draw was never measured as more than about 10amps. My 300W 12v power supply was never maxed out with 4 tank heaters. I ran my 2 fresh tank heaters directly from the battery line as 1) I didn't want to keep the 12v power supply I used to be continuously at max, and 2) I only ever travel with water in my fresh tanks (I keep the gray/black tanks empty).

With all the above running, it pulls a total of about 15-17 amps (again, split between two 20a breakers). So, basically, it's the equivalent of one of my A/C units in the summer, leaving plenty of room for everything else in the trailer to run within the normal 50a systems of RV's.

I do typically supplement my furnace with either an oil filled electric heater set on low-med or an electric fireplace (when I want it took look pretty). For that setup, I use the 30a and/or 20a plugs on the pedestal with an appropriate extension cord run through the slide out. I want the furnace to run regularly to keep my underbelly warm enough.

I'm a tech geek, so I've placed temp sensors throughout my trailer, underbelly, storage area and along my heat trace cables so I can monitor that everything is working like it should.

I'm sure I could write this up better if I spent some more time on it, but I wanted to get this out. Somewhere I have photos as well of what I did, but I'd have to do some digging at the moment. It should give you an idea of how to do the work if you would like to. It's definitely possible and not difficult, just tedious.

Hope this helps if anyone wants to give it a shot. Enjoy that winter camping! We sure do!

Tim

[viking42]

One person said not to use the gas refrigerator in cold weather. I’ve been doing that for years driving from Maine to Florida. Could someone please explain what the problem is?

[Mad5581]

Most north point and pinnacles wet bays are headed. They have a furnace duct behind the wall where all the pipes are. This dose not do a great job when you supplement your heat with electric. Your electric heater may cause your furnace to not cycle as much. This let's the wet bay get too cold. It can also be the cause of your holding tanks freezing up. I use electric heat as a supplement I set the furnace to come on at higher temperature then the electrical heater so the idea is to let the furnace cycle like normal but it just runs for less time. I also got a plug adapter that turns on when temp drops below 42 and turns off whe. Temp is above 47 I use this with a shop light in the wet bay. Just make sure you get a regular old school incandescent light bulb. As the LED, and compact florescent wont get warm enough to make a difference. Fyi the adapter I have they also make them to trun on at 37 and off at 41. I also have the residential fridge with the ice and water in it. The water line is exposed under the slide out and will freeze if you dont trun it off and drain the line. To be safe I built out of insulation a box that fits under the slide and put a heat lamp like for reptiles in that to stop the fridge from freezing up. I use the 37 to 41 degree adapter for that area.

[Mad5581]

To stop freezing while on the road that's easy set your furnace for the lowest setting it will go like 45 or 50 or so and let it cycle on the road. Some say to not travel with the propane on but I've done it for 20 years and my parents and in-laws as well as tons of other I know do it all the time. Tons do it just for the fridge. Also someone mentioned that the cold weather can damage the fridge. NO not unless your already having issues with the fridge. It definitely wont damage the fridge if your on propane. If you google how the fridge actually works it will make perfect sense at to why cold weather cant be why your fridge fails.

[Mad5581]

Flyingaggie. Man.. that's amazing. That is what the manufacturers should be doing for an arctic package. I would be willing to pay more for it. Probably a few $1000 more for it. I also like the idea of having all the upgrades as 120v and just have another cord that plugs into a separate 20amp outlet or even a 30amp outlet. I really like the idea of a dedicated outlet that has a separate braker and a direct feed to plug in by itself for a heater. The best part is you wouldn't need to worry about winterizing again as long as you have power available.

[Flyingaggie]

Originally Posted by Mad5581

Flyingaggie. Man.. that's amazing. That is what the manufacturers should be doing for an arctic package. I would be willing to pay more for it. Probably a few $1000 more for it. I also like the idea of having all the upgrades as 120v and just have another cord that plugs into a separate 20amp outlet or even a 30amp outlet. I really like the idea of a dedicated outlet that has a separate braker and a direct feed to plug in by itself for a heater. The best part is you wouldn't need to worry about winterizing again as long as you have power available.

Thanks Mad! I wish the manufacturer's would do this too. All parts for the 5er were less than $600. They could charge the same for this that they do an arctic package and it would be a lot better setup. Unfortunately, I doubt they'll ever do it, as it is more time consuming than just throwing stuff together.

On my bumper pull (it was a 30A trailer), I did as you discuss by using a 20a inlet with a male plug end on the trailer that was waterproof and placed it behind the license plate. I used a 20a short extension chord to plug into the pedestal. Being it never topped 10a, I was never running more than half rated capacity of any of the components.

With 50A service, I realized I didn't need to do that for my heat trace and tank heaters, which is why I run everything through the 50A service (just on seperate, new dedicated circuits). I will eventually do something similar as what I did on my bumper pull for the heat trace, but this time for my electric heater/fireplace. That way I won't have to run the extension chord through the slide anymore. I'll place an outlet inside the trailer that runs to an outside wall with the same 20a waterproof male plug setup.

I've made some other parts to the system, but it's still somewhat crude and needs some work before it's ready for the general public.

Anyway, hopefully some of what I've done will help someone else. I had to piece it together myself as other than tank heaters most relied on under pinning to keep from freezing up. One of these days I'll have to do a proper write-up with pictures to help others.

Tim

[Mad5581]

Originally Posted by Flyingaggie

Thanks Mad! I wish the manufacturer's would do this too. All parts for the 5er were less than $600. They could charge the same for this that they do an arctic package and it would be a lot better setup. Unfortunately, I doubt they'll ever do it, as it is more time consuming than just throwing stuff together.

On my bumper pull (it was a 30A trailer), I did as you discuss by using a 20a inlet with a male plug end on the trailer that was waterproof and placed it behind the license plate. I used a 20a short extension chord to plug into the pedestal. Being it never topped 10a, I was never running more than half rated capacity of any of the components.

With 50A service, I realized I didn't need to do that for my heat trace and tank heaters, which is why I run everything through the 50A service (just on seperate, new dedicated circuits). I will eventually do something similar as what I did on my bumper pull for the heat trace, but this time for my electric heater/fireplace. That way I won't have to run the extension chord through the slide anymore. I'll place an outlet inside the trailer that runs to an outside wall with the same 20a waterproof male plug setup.

I've made some other parts to the system, but it's still somewhat crude and needs some work before it's ready for the general public.

Anyway, hopefully some of what I've done will help someone else. I had to piece it together myself as other than tank heaters most relied on under pinning to keep from freezing up. One of these days I'll have to do a proper write-up with pictures to help others.

Tim

Tim I would love to see the pictures when you get a chance to post them. I part time in my rv so its always hooked up and it's in an area that gets a bit cold in the winter. Not cold like where you go but it will be in the single digits a few weeks of the year. I talked to a local dealer about just tank heater pads and they wanted like $800 installed and that was with them replacing the underbelly under warranty. So that labor was covered by jayco. Needless to say I passed on that deal. I would think a 4 season $90k 5thwheel would have some better factory options for cold weather RVing.

[Sheltietreasure]

Anyway, hopefully some of what I've done will help someone else. I had to piece it together myself as other than tank heaters most relied on under pinning to keep from freezing up. One of these days I'll have to do a proper write-up with pictures to help others.

Tim,
This is an excellent, well-thought out solution!

How can we persuade you to post those pictures and more details?!

[JohnWedell]

Quote from Mad5581:
I also have the residential fridge with the ice and water in it. The water line is exposed under the slide out and will freeze if you dont trun it off and drain the line. To be safe I built out of insulation a box that fits under the slide and put a heat lamp like for reptiles in that to stop the fridge from freezing up.

When temps get below 32 I just bring in the slide. So far it has worked well for us. We full time so next winter I will winterize the refrigerator only, this way I can leave the slide out all the time until we go to Florida.

[Cincinnati Kid]

Originally Posted by Flyingaggie

I'll give my experience with this. I use my 34.5BHTS 5er (and another brand bumper pull we had before) every winter for ski trips in both CO and UT. I've never winterized my trailers. It takes some work to do on your part, and YMMV, but I've never had a frozen line or tank. This is with temps for a week straight with lows of -42F and highs of -8F.

There's 5 products you'll need:
1) EasyHeat Heat Trace Cable (runs on 120V) https://amzn.to/2XGECmR (Exactly the stuff I used)
2) The cable connector kit for the trace cable: https://amzn.to/33f2QWy
3) Tank heaters (12 or 120V, your choice. I used 12V). Multiple brands But something similar to this: https://amzn.to/35ur4NU
4) Standard foam pipe insulation from your local hardware/big box store.
5) Extra circuit breakers and electrical wiring (if you want things on their own circuits like I did). I used 20a breakers and 20a wiring so I had some head room.

The EasyHeat (brand name) cable, make sure it's the silver braided stuff as in the link above, is self regulating throughout the entire link and is safe on PEX, PVC, etc. It can be wrapped over and over itself without worry of burnout like you get with the normal pipe heating systems you use for metal water lines. It comes with instructions on how tight you need to warp the pipes to get protection to the temps you want. My trailers were wrapped to handle down to -62F. Again, in a week of -42F lows and -8F highs, I never had a frozen line and that was in a trailer without heat going into that underbelly on the first trailer.

Tank heaters are pretty self-explanatory. On the first trailer I wired it directly into 12V system. On the 5er, I used a 300W 12v power supply running off the 120 system on it's own circuit breaker. I run all the heat trace cable on it's own

I did the work myself and both my trailers took me roughly 4 days from dropping the coroplast belly to reinstalling the coroplast. That wasn't necessarily working full days either.

The nice thing is you can run a single length between twin hot/cold runs, taping the heat trace cable sandwiched between the two lines and then putting the foam pipe insulation over that. With that done and running, the 1/2 PEX is good down to -65ish. For bigger lines, you'll have to spiral wrap the 2" and 3" lines at the intervals suggested by the manual, depending on how low of a temp you expect to be your worst. The lower the temp you're protecting to, the closer the spiral has to be. After the wraps are done, you either use the foam pipe insulation (you can use 2 of the 3/4" pipe foam around 2" water line) or regular insulation on the 3" lines.

If your tank valves are at the tanks, you won't really need to trace and insulate from the out side of the valve to the exit of the trailer. With tank heaters, the tank valves shouldn't freeze. However, I don't trust that exclusively, so I wrapped the valves with the trace cable with several figure eights around the valve to ensure it's protected.

I've never worried about above floor line as I know I have a furnace for that. If I have water lines that run along an outside wall above the floor, I would insulate those just to be safe. I've never used under pinning either. I've relied entirely on my engineering and never had a freeze.

Both trailers, I used between 110ft and 140ft of the cable to cover everything to my satisfaction. Out of all that cable total amp draw was never measured as more than about 10amps. My 300W 12v power supply was never maxed out with 4 tank heaters. I ran my 2 fresh tank heaters directly from the battery line as 1) I didn't want to keep the 12v power supply I used to be continuously at max, and 2) I only ever travel with water in my fresh tanks (I keep the gray/black tanks empty).

With all the above running, it pulls a total of about 15-17 amps (again, split between two 20a breakers). So, basically, it's the equivalent of one of my A/C units in the summer, leaving plenty of room for everything else in the trailer to run within the normal 50a systems of RV's.

I do typically supplement my furnace with either an oil filled electric heater set on low-med or an electric fireplace (when I want it took look pretty). For that setup, I use the 30a and/or 20a plugs on the pedestal with an appropriate extension cord run through the slide out. I want the furnace to run regularly to keep my underbelly warm enough.

I'm a tech geek, so I've placed temp sensors throughout my trailer, underbelly, storage area and along my heat trace cables so I can monitor that everything is working like it should.

I'm sure I could write this up better if I spent some more time on it, but I wanted to get this out. Somewhere I have photos as well of what I did, but I'd have to do some digging at the moment. It should give you an idea of how to do the work if you would like to. It's definitely possible and not difficult, just tedious.

Hope this helps if anyone wants to give it a shot. Enjoy that winter camping! We sure do!

Tim

That sounds great. What do you use for A/C power while driving? Generator? Inverter?

[Flyingaggie]

Originally Posted by Cincinnati Kid

That sounds great. What do you use for A/C power while driving? Generator? Inverter?

I don't. I've driven 16 hours between being plugged in with temps at or below freezing and never had anything be frozen up. I will keep the furnace on the lowest setting if it's consistently below freezing while driving to keep some warm air in the underbelly. With everything being heated before I leave and insulated, it just hasn't been a problem.

When I first installed it, I forgot to plug in one section of my trace when I got to Colorado. It was -23F that night. Next morning it was frozen. I realized really quickly I forgot to plug it in. Plugged it in and it thawed within a few minutes. PEX being extruded, it's very strong. I've been told by a couple of PEX reps that it can handle being extended frozen to -20F and thaw without problems. I don't want to test that, but that's what they claim. Now, you do have some connectors and such that aren't made of PEX so that will be your weak points.

That being said, I will say we had one time we ran out of propane while away from the trailer (I had to go to work for a few days). When I arrived, the trailer inside was 12F and had been there for about a day from what I could tell. So, all the above floor lines had frozen, since none of the above floor had been traced/insulated. I reset the heater and turned the water off to make sure nothing would leak when it thawed. By the next morning all the above floor had thawed and I had no leaks anywhere when I turned the water back on, including the plastic faucets that are installed in trailers. That was in my old bumper pull. But, it made me believe in PEX a lot.

Tim

[Cincinnati Kid]

Originally Posted by Flyingaggie

I don't. I've driven 16 hours between being plugged in with temps at or below freezing and never had anything be frozen up. I will keep the furnace on the lowest setting if it's consistently below freezing while driving to keep some warm air in the underbelly. With everything being heated before I leave and insulated, it just hasn't been a problem.

When I first installed it, I forgot to plug in one section of my trace when I got to Colorado. It was -23F that night. Next morning it was frozen. I realized really quickly I forgot to plug it in. Plugged it in and it thawed within a few minutes. PEX being extruded, it's very strong. I've been told by a couple of PEX reps that it can handle being extended frozen to -20F and thaw without problems. I don't want to test that, but that's what they claim. Now, you do have some connectors and such that aren't made of PEX so that will be your weak points.

That being said, I will say we had one time we ran out of propane while away from the trailer (I had to go to work for a few days). When I arrived, the trailer inside was 12F and had been there for about a day from what I could tell. So, all the above floor lines had frozen, since none of the above floor had been traced/insulated. I reset the heater and turned the water off to make sure nothing would leak when it thawed. By the next morning all the above floor had thawed and I had no leaks anywhere when I turned the water back on, including the plastic faucets that are installed in trailers. That was in my old bumper pull. But, it made me believe in PEX a lot.

Tim

Thanks- We're new this year, and will head for warm places this winter, but hope to branch out next year and camp in all types of weather.