Winterizing, oh the joys!

Being a new travel trailer owner, I consulted the experts on winterizing – Google and YouTube. I thought it would be pretty complicated, but it is not bad.

Here is the process I followed the first few times:

• I disconnected the city water hose from the trailer.
• I then opened the drains for the hot and cold pipes. On my trailer, it is just under the city water hookup.
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• Then I used a special fitting that attaches to the city water connection. This will connect an air hose to the city water connection.
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• I connect my small air compressor to the fitting, dial it down to 35 psi, then turn it on.
• I close the hot and cold pipe drains.
• After waiting for my air compressor to catch up, I go inside and open each faucet one at a time. Air and water shoots out. Once it is just air, I close the faucet, and move on to the next one.
• Hot water heater. We turn the water heater off the night before, to let it cool down a bit. Turn the air compressor off. (see story below) relieve pressure in the heater by opening the pressure relief valve. Then remove the anode at the bottom of the water heater. This will take time to drain, I leave the anode just below where I removed it, and close everything up……time for a story. The water heater needs to be drained. The first time I did this, I left the air compressor connected and running – building pressure in the system. When I removed the plug/anode, water shot out 6-8 feet after it shot me right in the chest!
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• Time to work on the drains. We use the pink RV antifreeze and pour a couple cups into each drain. The measurement is very important. Usually I upend the gallon jug and wait for two glugs. B-)
• That is all we do. If we lived in colder climates, we would pump antifreeze into the water pipes.

This is the process we did the first few times. After looking at the temperature in St. George where we store HOWE we stopped blowing out the lines with air. We just open the drain lines and open the faucets. This might catch us someday – who knows. Most people do this once a year in the fall but since we are using it almost every weekend, we do it almost every weekend. B-)