De winterize?

[cccougar]

Weather is finally turning - a little bit anyway- here in NJ. Want to de winterize but I'm concerned about night time temps. The 7 day forcast shows one - two nights where it could get down to or feel like 31-33 degrees. Should I have concern? Day time temps- 50-65. Thanks.

[CloudDriver]

cccougar wrote:
Weather is finally turning - a little bit anyway- here in NJ. Want to de winterize but I'm concerned about night time temps. The 7 day forcast shows one - two nights where it could get down to or feel like 31-33 degrees. Should I have concern? Day time temps- 50-65. Thanks.

Ignore the "feels like" or wind chill temperatures - those only apply to warm bodies such as people. The actual temperature is the only thing that applies to freezing water. Also remember that the low temperature forecast for the night is not likely to be the actual temperature for the entire night. As an example, our home weather station shows a gradual drop from 54 degrees yesterday evening to a low of 33 degrees at about 6:00AM this morning. The temperature held steady until 7:00AM then began to rise rapidly to the current 52 degrees.

While water freezes at 32 degrees, it takes a long time to freeze the volume of water in RV piping at that temperature. Also, since the RV is exposed to much warmer temperatures during the day, it will take a long time to cool off during the night. Unless the night time temperatures get down to the low twenties, it is unlikely that the interior of the RV will actually drop below freezing before morning.

As previously mentioned, if in doubt, open cabinet doors to let heat in and turn on the propane furnace at a low temperature setting or set up some electric heaters.

[jfkmk]

I think you'll be fine dewinterizing now. I've camped in colder weather than we're now getting. Don't worry about the "feel like" temperature, that doesn't apply. I haven't dewinterized yet, but probably will next week. I'll do the other springtime stuff and dewinterize last.

[RoyB]

I like the idea that I think was MENA on the RV NET of using a cabinet wall mounted 120VAC thermostat controlled AXIAL blower fan (Attic Fan Controller-LOWES) to pull air thru all of the cabinets that are connected together. I do that on my OFF-ROAD POPUP and can pull fresh air from inside the trailer all around one end of the trailer cabinets and storage under the seats etc. I did have to add a couple of small round vents from LOWES.


You can do the same thing by just opening cabinet door but using the fans to vent them is a better idea for me.

Then I have a couple of the oil-filled portable heaters setup using the THERMO CUBEs (AMAZON) that turn-on when it gets down to 35 degrees inside the trailer and turns-off at 45 degrees


Around here where the WX is never really extreme we will might get down to freezing overnight but it seems to always warm back up the next day. It takes a couple of real low temp days to do some damage here.

I use the BLOW OUT method here for winterizing all of the water lines, drain the water tanks and then add a dab of pink stuff the P-traps. It is easy to quickly go from Winterizing to NON-WINTERIZING by just adding water the fresh water tank.

Roy Ken

[Jim_Shoe]

If you de-winterize it will freeze that night - even if its June. 🙂

[wkandxj]

I was just wondering about this as well. Being in Colorado Springs the weather can change on you really quickly but despite a couple inches of snow the other day we're still hovering about the same temps as the OP.

[Cobra21]

I usually don't de-winterize till temps generally stay above freezing.
I sleep better at night.

Brian

[therink]

I would not worry about night time temp ad low as around 28 when day time temps are above 50. If in doubt on any given night, I may fire up the water heater and furnace for a couple hours before nighttime just to give some added protection to get through the night. I have had a night or two in the past as low as 24 with no problems. I do watch things closely though.