Winterizing Suggestions??
This Senior (71) First time owner of a Class C Motor home. Purchased an older 2000 Ford Coachman this passed April. Served us very nicely on a couple of cross country trips. Sad to say, but Will be ge...
Forum Discussion
There's really not much to it. The main thing (and it's important) is to get the water out of the plumbing system, both the fresh water system and the holding tanks.
Taking care of the holding tanks is pretty easy—you just dump everything normally. There are a couple of ways of taking care of the fresh water system. First, you drain what you can with the low point drains and tank drain and water heater drain plug. Then you can either use an air compressor hooked up to the water inlet to blow all the water out of the plumbing, opening each faucet and fixture in turn to get all the water out of the lines; or you can pump RV antifreeze through the pipes from bottles. (There is likely a suction fill/winterize port to hook up a hose to that will let you pump the antifreeze in.) In the latter case, you need to bypass the water heater if there is set of bypass valves installed. Theses bypass valves would be near the water heater, and often are hidden under a drawer or cabinet or something.
If the water system is taken care of, you just have to make sure the batteries are fully charged and either disconnect them or have some sort of a float charger or maintainer to keep them charged. (If fully charged, they won't self-discharge too much over the winter when disconnected, but will be discharged quite a bit by sitting with the usual parasitic loads from the motorhome.)
It is, of course, good to clean out any food and anything that might freeze and burst containers, and to make sure all the windows are closed and all the seams caulked weathertight and so forth. It is best to leave a ceiling vent open a bit, which is easy to do if you have a vent cover over one or more of them, for a bit of ventilation. Unless there's a whole lot that piles up, it's not really necessary to worry about snow accumulation on the roof.
Taking care of the holding tanks is pretty easy—you just dump everything normally. There are a couple of ways of taking care of the fresh water system. First, you drain what you can with the low point drains and tank drain and water heater drain plug. Then you can either use an air compressor hooked up to the water inlet to blow all the water out of the plumbing, opening each faucet and fixture in turn to get all the water out of the lines; or you can pump RV antifreeze through the pipes from bottles. (There is likely a suction fill/winterize port to hook up a hose to that will let you pump the antifreeze in.) In the latter case, you need to bypass the water heater if there is set of bypass valves installed. Theses bypass valves would be near the water heater, and often are hidden under a drawer or cabinet or something.
If the water system is taken care of, you just have to make sure the batteries are fully charged and either disconnect them or have some sort of a float charger or maintainer to keep them charged. (If fully charged, they won't self-discharge too much over the winter when disconnected, but will be discharged quite a bit by sitting with the usual parasitic loads from the motorhome.)
It is, of course, good to clean out any food and anything that might freeze and burst containers, and to make sure all the windows are closed and all the seams caulked weathertight and so forth. It is best to leave a ceiling vent open a bit, which is easy to do if you have a vent cover over one or more of them, for a bit of ventilation. Unless there's a whole lot that piles up, it's not really necessary to worry about snow accumulation on the roof.
