New camper frozen water lines

[bigtime_077]

I just bought a brand new 2013 Dutchmen travel trailer. Stupid me I opted out of paying the dealer to winterize it again in case of cold weather because I had RV antifreeze at home and wanted to do it myself. Well one thing led to another and I didn't get it all done as I got called away from it and last night it got down to 9 degrees here.

I got to the water heater and got antifreeze out of the kitchen sink on both sides before I ran out of antifreeze so I know those and the pump is all good. I got some antifreeze this morning and got home from work tonight and quickly pressured the system back up to try again. I can get a very slow trickle of antifreeze out of the toilet and the cold water side of the sink. Nothing out of the hot water side, either side of the tub, nothing out of the outside water port or the high pressure water hook up. It must all be froze.

Low of 6 tonight and high of 23 tomorrow and high of 42 on Tuesday. How screwed am I? Are the water lines under the trailer fairly durable or will they likely rupture? Bottom of the trailer is all covered so I can't look unless I pull that covering off.

My plan is to wait until Tuesday and Wednesday while I am off and it is warm to try again. Once I get antifreeze flow my plan is to shut all the faucets and everything off other than the pump and see if the system will stay pressurized and look for antifreeze coming out of the bottom covering to know if I have a leak now.

Any words of advice and how screwed am I?

[wbwood]

Dick_B wrote:
(and never put it into the FW tank).

That's subjective

[VAfan]

Hopefully you are ok……I was surprised how many people don’t winterize when we were looking at used trailers several years ago. They claimed no problems and we have occasional lows in the single digits.

[westend]

Your quick connect fitting is all about parts exterior to the piping so water freezing inside a fitting isn't going to cause that.

I'd suggest that you don't leave pressure in the plumbing system while you're trying to sort this all out. A cracked fitting may flood your trailer if the system is under pressure.

[bigtime_077]

I got home from work today and went right out to the camper again because while at work today I thought to myself hey you dummy the city water hook up won't bleed out unless you remove the screen filter and press in on the check valve. So when I got there I did just that and guess what? Out came the antifreeze. Not only that but in my hast this morning I shut the water pump off but never bled the pressure off. Well lucky me again, there was all kinds of pressure at the city water connection before I even turned the pump back on. It appears to have held the pressure all day so like 14 hours. I don't want to jinx myself but it appears it is holding pressure so I am hoping it is not leaking. Now for some reason I still can't get the spray port hose into the quick connect fitting. I don't know if it is still froze or not but it is literally 2" above the city water port so I would almost think if the city water connection wasn't froze that wouldn't be either. So I don't know if being a metal connection it is staying froze or maybe the connection itself isn't right. I guess I will find out tomorrow as it will be 45 degrees here.

I am keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks a lot for all the replies and for just following along with my saga that was caused by my own stupidity. I guess sometimes I just have to learn by beating my head against the wall.

[bigtime_077]

Yeah I got the water heater when I started winterizing. Forgot to bypass it and ran out of antifreeze. Once I realized why I ran out of antifreeze I bypassed the water heater and drained the antifreeze back out into a bucket and reused it to do the rest of the camper. Between those times though it got down to 9 degrees overnight and by the time I got out of work the next day and tried again the lines were already frozen. At least I know water heater, water pump, kitchen sink, toilet, bathroom sink, and tub faucet are now full of antifreeze. Its the city water connection and the outdoor water spray port that are still froze. My camper has the polar package with the underbelly pan. It looks to me that the lines run under the camper floor in the underbelly pan because I can't see where they go into the wall but looks like they go through the floor. So out of everything I only had antifreeze in the water heater, water pump, and kitchen sink at first but last night I cranked the heat up and ran overnight and this morning before work I was able to get antifreeze into all the bathroom fixtures so the furnace must have heated the lines under the floor enough to thaw. After I got antifreeze through that stuff I shut all faucets and turned pump on to see if it would hold pressure without kicking on and off. It did hold pressure so I believe at least that stuff is leak free. Its just the two outside parts I am worried about now. When I talked to the tech at the dealership today he said it will probably be alright as it has Pex piping in the camper so that should be fine it is just the plastic elbows and stuff that usually break. He said there really shouldn't be any in the rear area just up around the water heater so there are fewer joints.

The camper is new but they water test it before they let them go out because they have had a couple problems before with leaks right from the factory on some entry level models they use to sell. Plus then they could test the water heater also.

It also looks like if I do have a leak somewhere it is pretty easy to take the belly pan off the bottom of the trailer and get to most everything.

Does anyone know do the water lines generally run under the floor on these and not around through the walls?

Thanks

[Bill1374]

Know how you feel and for someone who's been around as long as I have, I should know better. Got home from Florida yesterday, temps in the 30s so I unloaded the liquids and most of the inside.Didn't check weather and wound up near zero overnight. Froze the lines up. Worked on it today and got the cold running but hot line still frozen. I'll leave the heat on and if it doesn't loosen up, I'll run a salamander under in the morning to thaw that line.

Bill

[jfkmk]

You said you got to the water heater. Do you mean you isolated it and removed the plug? If so, the water heater will be OK. If you started winterizing and just didn't finish, I would think any damage would be isolated to where you didn't get the antifreeze to flow from.

Just to clear something up. Is the trailer new? They generally come winterized.

[bigtime_077]

I did put antifreeze into the tub drains and the P traps. Ran enough antifreeze through them and the toilet to get antifreeze into the gray and black tanks also to keep valves from freezing

[Handbasket]

Did you put some AF into all the sink and tub drains to protect the 'P' traps?

Jim, "World Champion Cat Herder."

[Deb_and_Ed_M]

I hope you drained the black/gray tanks - the PVC drain pipes will NOT expand with ice. We were lucky - the used 5er we bought in late November still had a bit of water in it, which cracked the outside drain pipe 😞 The good news: after draining all the water (brought the trailer indoors to warm up) and cleaning the outside of the PVC, a product called Rescue Tape fixed the crack and hasn't leaked since.

[bigtime_077]

Also I even shut the water hook up off at the campsite if we leave. Saw a trailer last year spring a leak and water was running out of the camper while the people were gone away.

[bigtime_077]

Pump is off while I am not there. No antifreeze in the fresh water tank and I drained the antifreeze out of the water heater once I realized what I did.

Talked to the service tech at the dealership a few minutes ago and he said likely no damage. The PEX line will take a lot of abuse and if something fails it will likely be plastic elbows and such in the water lines. He also said once I get antifreeze through everything to shut all the outs and leave the pump on to see if it will hold pressure without the pump kicking on. If the pump doesn't come on after pressured up all is well.

[mpierce]

Do NOT leave the pump ON, unless you are there! If something is cracked, and thaws out, you do not want water filling the trailer.

[RoyB]

I like to use the 100WATT LIGHT BULBS where I can...

These THERMO CUBES are great for this application. You can plug these into a 120VAC receptacle and then plug in some 100WATT LIGHTS into the Thermo CUBE. When the temp drops to 35 degrees these will turn on the lamps and then turn them off when the temp gets above 45 degrees.

I also use these to control 120VAC for a 0IL-FILLED electric heater...
AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON


Roy Ken