Winter is upon us again and the temperature has started to drop below Zero. It's that time of year when we start thinking of winterizing the trailer. I already have a couple of jugs of antifreeze left over from last year so it's just a case of finding the time and making the effort to get the job done.
The major part of the process is the plumbing. Practically all of the pipework in the trailer is plastic which means that any water or moisture left in there will eventually freeze. The problem there is that when the water freezes it expands which in turn cracks the plastic piping. Repair costs can be quite expensive in the spring because not all of the piping is accessible, and you just know that if there is going to be a split, you are going to be ripping walls and cupboards out to get at it.
Now it's not just any old antifreeze, bear in mind that this will more than likely get into pipes that may come in contact with drinking water. So therefore it has to to be NON- poisonous. We don't actually drink the water out of our fresh water tank as we carry extra bottled water anyway but we do use tap water for brush our teeth. Even though the antifreeze is harmless it does taste disgusting (I found this out when I was siphoning last year !)
The process is pretty simple. First you remove the drain plugs from the water heater and the fresh water tank. It is also a good idea to rinse the black and the grey tanks out. We did this at the end of our last trip, we quarter filled the tanks with soapy water and went for a drive over some bumpy roads to shake it up a bit, and then of course dumped the contents in a Sani-Dump. The main thing here is to make sure all of the tanks that hold water are completely emptied.
The next job is to remove the wall that houses the water pump, flip the 3 valves and stick the winterizing pipe into a jug of antifreeze. You then turn on all the faucets, shower, outside shower and flush the toilet until all of the pipes turn pink and the faucets run pink. If you have done this correctly then all of the water should have been replaced with the antifreeze. On our trailer we have the fresh water tank which has been drained therefore we don't put any antifreeze in there, we have also drained the water heater and those three valves will have ensured that no Antifreeze went in there. Apparently, I have been told that if you do get antifreeze in the boiler and you don't flush it out correctly you will never get the taste out of the water. I'm not sure if that would be a problem because who would drink water out of the hot faucet anyway??? Oh yes I almost forgot, DO NOT forget to run antifreeze through the outside shower, this is the part that many people forget.
The next thing yo do is remove the batteries, Zingy has got 2 x 6 Volt batteries so before I disconnect them I take a photograph of the terminals to remind me in the Spring which way round they go. These batteries then get cleaned off and stored safely in the spare bedroom. I put them side by side and reconnect the bridging cable. The reason for this is now I can connect my battery charger (12 Volts) and leave them on MAINTAIN all over the Winter.
While I was doing all of this, Jan's job was to clean everything inside, vacuum the floor, remove any food, clothes, bedding and anything else that we are going to store in the spare bedroom until the spring.
Finally, the last job is to remove all of the batteries from the smoke alarms, remote controls and anything else that uses batteries.
And then wait until Spring 8-)
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