Question for people that live in the land of snow

On the return trip, add anti freeze to the fresh water tank. When it gets cold enough to worry about freeze up, turn on the pump and the faucets flush toilet, and do all water lines. This can even be done while traveling down the road. The pink stuff going into the Holdings tanks will keep them from freezing.

I did it during.. But I re-wintrizd when I got back home.

On the few occasions we've winterized the coach while staying at our Adirondack cottage through the Christmas/New Years holidays (most of the time we stay in the coach), we de-winterize a day or two before we head south, fill the water tank, and just keep the heat on until we reach warmer weather for our own comfort. We've never had a serious problem with frozen water lines even at sub-zero temps. If there's still a few below freezing nights when we come back for spring clean-up, it doesn't matter since we'll have the heat on anyway, but I could blow the lines out if needed.

We blow out the lines so when we leave we go south and then put water in it, if it's cold we turn on the furnace and the tank heaters.
We like to stay south till it's warm enough but if we need to come home in the cold we just blow out the lines when we get home.

We took ours out of storage right after New Year's in NW New Mexico during a very cold (-20 at our Durango, CO airport) spell. We took a few gallons of water, enough to flush and make coffee, brush teeth, etc., and did not commission our water systems until we were in San Diego. Spent a night in the place where we stored it (an RV park with hook-ups) and one on the road in Arizona where night time temps were still well below freezing. In the morning, a big ice cylinder fell off the living room slide when we closed it! That, from opening the slides the night before. Used paper plates, but rinsed out real coffee mugs and had a meal that we had prepared at home for both nights. We left our coach north of Tucson for a few weeks on the return and re-winterized there, because they, too, had a week or so of 20 degree temps at night.

We depart January 1st from about 40 miles north of Philadelphia and drive about 500 miles the 1st day. This is usually far enough south to get out of the freeze zone for the 1st night of staying in the motorhome. It's easy to de-winterize....just hookup water and run through the lines till all sign of pink antifreeze are gone.

Another option would be to stay the first night at a motel/hotel and then on the 2nd night you should again be out of the freeze zone.

When returning home winterize the motorhome in the South Carolina area. After winterizing use rest stop bathrooms and stop overnight at hotel/motel.

MagillaGorilla wrote:
Have any of you ever taken your MH out of winter storage and used it to go south for a few weeks? If so did you de-winterize it before or during the trip? If so how did you re-winterize it before you returned home to the snow?

You posed in Class A's and we have a Class C. But, in our case, the answer is sort'a "Yes". Yes as we re-winterized it when we got back. And yes as we de-winterized it before leaving. We got back late and it wasn't hitting bitter cold, so I left the furnace on that night and ran the tank warmers.


But then in the morning, I re-winterized everything in front of the house. Since I'm new to this, it took me about an hour.