Winterizing July 29, 2016, 04:54:17 pm New forum member and previous owner of an LD. My wife and I are thinking of getting another used LD in the future so I am in research mode. Although quite untimely, given the season, I have a question about winterizing since we have moved to the SoCal mountains recently and never had to worry about winterizing our old '85 in year's past. Perhaps some of our northern members would be best able to answer this but I would like to hear from any folks regarding their experiences with storing an LD in colder climes. I know LD's are very well insulated so maybe it's not even an issue but we would need to keep it outside in the winter months where it can dip down into the teens. I would rather not have to winterize it in case we wanted to take off for a few days during the winter. Thanks!
Re: Winterizing Reply #1 – July 29, 2016, 07:02:55 pm My personal experience from CO.After our rig has sat outside for a while, the interior and exterior temperature is pretty much the same. Freezing outside; freezing inside. A little difference, but not huge. If there is water in your hot water heater or any water lines, most likely it will freeze if the temperature gets into the teens for a while. Damage may occur to your plumbing.Once you have winterized it once or twice using the compressed air method, it's only an hour or so project. When you're ready to head out, just fill the water tank and off you go.Lots of peace of mind.Now if there is electrical power available you just use a heater. If you rarely get sub- freezing temps, just turn the propane heater to its lowest setting and turn on the HWH for a few hours if it's going to get real cold and stay that way overnight. If you get a Wave type heater, that will use even less propane. Ed
Re: Winterizing Reply #2 – July 29, 2016, 07:04:25 pm Hello HiLola ... Your subject seems to one of those topics that surfaces somewhat regularly. I should know because your question is somewhat similar to my question about a year ago. We wanted to keep our LD ready to go in late Fall and early Spring, yet avoid any hard freezes. So we prepared the Coach by dumping all the tanks and cracking the dump valves a bit to prevent leftover water from freezing. I also drained the water heater. We dumped a couple of cups of RV antifreeze in all the drains and in the toilet bowel. We placed insulation in all the vents to include those factory snap-on covers. We placed sun screen insulation in all the windows and a heavy blanket behind the drive/passenger seats. Then we ran a small heater on a low temp setting which we connected to a 15 amp plug, which keep the inside temperatures in the low 40's on the coldest nights (20 degrees was our low limit). We opened the cabinet doors beneath the kitchen sink and the bathroom sink. As you can read, about the only step we didn't do was either blow the water lines with compressed air or put RV anti-freeze in the water lines. So when it was time to go, it was a rather simple process ... just fill up with water, prep the black tank and disconnect from shore power.Other Cold-Weather LDers also mentioned to us that part of this partial winterization strategy depends on how long the daytime temperatures will be below freezing and for how many days. So when we saw in the 10 day forecast really prolonged below freezing temperatures, we blew the water lines and winterized the water pump.And that's our solution for trying to achieve the outcome you described in your post. Hope this helps.
Re: Winterizing Reply #3 – July 29, 2016, 09:06:30 pm You can dig back in the archives and find my old messages regarding the process I went through in Oct 2012 to modify our '99 RB. Being a Minnesotan (who does not travel during the winter months), I winterize the RV every fall and store it indoors. No ill effects to report. The cold isn't nearly as hard on her as the heat would be. Key is to have a "bypass kit" installed on the hot water heater for a smooth process.
Re: Winterizing Reply #4 – July 29, 2016, 11:30:29 pm I empty all the tanks, use the compressed air method as described in the manual. Add anti freeze to fill all the goose necks and some in the toilet bowl allowing a couple qts to go in the grey and black tanks. And before putting the fresh water lines back on the pump run antifreeze through the strainer and water pump so water doesn't freeze in them.
Re: Winterizing Reply #5 – July 29, 2016, 11:39:23 pm Quote from: John DaCrema - July 29, 2016, 11:30:29 pmI empty all the tanks, use the compressed air method as described in the manual. Add anti freeze to fill all the goose necks and some in the toilet bowl allowing a couple qts to go in the grey and black tanks. And before putting the fresh water lines back on the pump run antifreeze through the strainer and water pump so water doesn't freeze in them. Ditto. No problems in all these years. Nebraska is cold in the winter.
Re: Winterizing Reply #6 – July 30, 2016, 02:29:17 pm Thanks for all your responses! Sounds as if I will probably need to do some winterizing tasks. I guess the alternative is to park it our son's driveway in San Diego during the winter? Now I'm wondering if I will need to cover it as well!
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