First TT Trip... in freezing temps advice please!

Some of your questions may need some clarification to best advise. Will the temps spend most of the time above freezing?

I would not springerize if the temps are to remain close to or below freezing.

When I do springerize, the pink stuff gets cleared out of the system - completely.

I would not run the heater while traveling, I would wait and springerize once I'm at my above freezing destination.

Don't put antifreeze in your FW tank, ever. It will take forever to get rid of.

You quite likely DO have a water heater bypass. You may have to remove a panel to find it, but it should be near the water heater. Even the most basic RVs have them.

Run the pump only on the cold water supply to keep its antifreeze out of the water heater, until you know the pump is flushed. You will use a lot of water getting the antifreeze flushed OUT of the water heater if you let it get in there.

Then put the WH on bypass and run out the hot water lines.

Finally take the WH off bypass, fill it, and run out the hot water lines.

THEN turn on the WH.

On my 3 TTs that I have owned, I never use any anti-freeze to winterize.
All my TTs have had a low point on the hot and cold water pipes and have a faucet at that lowest point. I open all the faucets and let all the water drain out of the system (including the HW tank); Been doing it this way for 20 years with no problems.

You may want to look underneath your TT and see if you see a red and blue pipes sticking down with on/off tap - this is your pipe drains.

When we go camping in the winter (25F) - just close the drain tap/faucets, fill up with water when you reach your destinations and turn on the water
pump to fill the HW tank/pipes. Upon leaving, you open the drain taps/faucet and empty the system.....never had to use compressed air. I live in NJ, so we get cold temps up here.

This way you don't need to travel with a "heated" TT and waste porpane and run down your batteries.

It takes quite a bit of air to blow the lines. I'd not bother with a reserve air tank, but I might consider a tiny pancake type compressor to go along.

How cold will it be?

Will you have shore power?

I have used my rv at -37 c (-34 f).

Sounds like you are a bit confused. Once you winterize with the "pink stuff", you want to keep it that way until you de-winterize. De-winterize will replace the "pink stuff" with fresh water. You will also need to flush the "pink stuff" out of the lines before using any water.

The "pink stuff" will not hurt you if you drink it or it's diluted with fresh water. But your water will not taste right, and it will be foamy.

You should keep your camper completely winterized, including the water heater being drained, until you reach your destination. Then go through the entire process of flushing out all the lines. After flushing all the lines ... THEN open the by-pass on the water heater and fill it.

Just like your fresh water tank, if you get "pink stuff" in your water heater, you will have difficulty flushing it out. There will be traces of it in your water lines for a long time, keeping your water tasting funny and constantly foaming some. Eventually it will flush out with enough use. But keeping it by-passed until the main lines are all flushed out, then opening it to fill it is what you really should do.

A pressurized air tank may be adequate to blow out your lines. But it depends upon how large and how much pressure the tank holds and is.

You should never put "pink stuff" in your fresh water tank. And if you dilute the "pink stuff" with water, it looses it's effectiveness. The object of the "pink stuff" is to *replace* the water so *no* water is in the line. If you add "pink stuff" and then water to your fresh water tank, you might as well just buy a new tank now! The water will freeze.

Keep your fresh water tank empty. The very small amount of water in the tank that remains after draining, will not hurt anything. There's plenty of room for expansion of the ice, unlike a water line that is only 1/2 inch in diameter.

Bottom line, keep it winterized, and de-winterize when you reach your destination. Winterize again when you return home.

Thanks for all the valuable responses, I'm learning a lot.

From home where we are leaving, to the destination, and back will all be most likely below freezing temps, but not lower than maybe 10* or so.

I don't know if we will have water hook ups or power, we do have a yamaha 2000 generator, 2 6v batteries in series, and 5 gal of extra fuel for the genset.

The dealer said that the there is a belly pan on this model and the tanks are insulated so as long as the coach doesn't get too cold nothing will freeze, but then to drain everything, and winterizer before traveling back home to store it.

I understand from your responses that I likely have a water heater bypass so I'll search for that.

I also understand to never put antifreeze the in the FW tank.

I guess my question is if I'm going to be dry camping, which means I need to fill up the FW tank at home before traveling, it seems I would need to run the heat in the coach to make sure the pipes don't freeze during the travel if I can't flush out the pink stuff at the destination due to no water hookups.

If it gets below 10 f you need to 'winterize' the fridge.

See the winter camping thread under the full time forums.

Do take along an electric heater for use with shore power and the generator. (with genny run at only 750 watts)

If you will be traveling in below freezing temps -

Remember that even though you have a belly pan, you will be running down the road at 60 mph, creating quite a wind chill and maybe driving cold air past the belly pan barrier. Might not affect the water tank, but may affect some of those small water pipes.

If you are going to be below freezing for the entire trip I would not de-winterize. Do not use the FW tank or plumbing at all. Use bottled water for everything and do not dump into the holding tanks. Take "back packing" baths (heat a little water and just wash off).

If you try to use the on board plumbing (shower, toilet, etc.) you will likely run into freezing up. Don't risk it.

Everything worked out fine. We drove to the site (where we did have hookups), turned on the heat, hooked up water and everything and used the trailer normally.

We didn't have a compressor so we winterized this way:

Before we packed up, we drained the FW, grey, black tanks, drained the WH, outside shower, low points, and all faucets and toilet. Then we bypassed the WH and used the pump prime hose to pump antifreeze through each faucet until pink came out, poured some pink into the traps, and headed home.

Hopefully we did it right.