Winterizing Hand Pump

[Griswald One]

So for the last two years I have struggled with Winterizing the Greyhawk. Most of my problems stemming from the ridiculously strong check valve. The first year I did not know about the screen, so fought with the system. The second year I knew about the screen but forgot to flip it back, so had problems in the spring due to the open check valve.

This year I decided to heck with the modern tech and went back to my old TT bag of tricks and pulled out the RV Winterizing hand pump. I screwed in the hose connection, set the system to Winterize/Sanitize, opened up the kitchen faucet, opened a couple of jugs of pink and then primed the system using the hand pump. After that I was able to throw the water pump on, give it one more quick hand pump and the whole system worked perfectly. I was by myself so I was able to use the water pump switch at the water system controls to activate and deactivate antifreeze flows and then move about the trailer to initialize each water source as needed. Once the system and check valve were primed by the hand pump the fluids flowed without further assistance. When I had to switch between gallon jugs I was able to use the hand pump to re-prime things and prevent air pockets, may not have been needed, but it was easy to do.

I tend to overkill a bit, so I went through 3 gallons of pink stuff but with the hand pump to assist I had the job done in 20 minutes. That included running antifreeze through hot and cold lines to two sinks, the toilet, the indoor shower, the outdoor shower and the hold and cold drain points.

Have a great winter and look forward to running into JOF members on the road next year!

[pconroy]

That's a great tip! Three gallons isn't that much more than what I do - I typically do a little under 2.