We finally took possession of our Bullet 247BHSWE! I made it home without hitting anything, unhitched it successfully, and things are going great. This morning I noticed a little bit of frost on everything. The dealer had asked if I wanted them to winterize it, but we plan on going out next weekend and I didn't expect it to get cold between now and then, so I said no. Luckily, the temperature last night barely if at all got below freezing (weather history says it was 36 degrees). However, tomorrow night is supposed to get down to 27. So, I frantically worked to get everything to winterize the trailer myself. Here's what I did...
First I searched all over town for a blow out plug. I had no luck until my last stop at Ace Hardware. They didn't have a blowout plug, but they had a hose adapter for an air compressor. I bought that and some antifreeze and headed home. Turns out I didn't have the right size socket for the water heater, or all the various couplers for the air compressor, and the hose adapter was a female plug. After enough trips to Ace Hardware that they knew me by name, I finally had all the pieces.
Step by step:
- First I relieved pressure to the hot water heater, then opened the drain plug for the hot water heater. The water was coming out, but in spurts. I realized I had closed the pressure valve and opened it up and drained the water heater.
-In the meantime, I opened the black water and the grey water valves. It hasn't been used and the dealer had released water from the tanks yesterday, but I went ahead anyway.
-Under the RV are two hoses. One is blue, and the other red. The blue I assume is the fresh water tank and low point drain? Is the red a drain for the hot water heater? I opened the blue and let it drain. Then I opened the red and let it drain, though there wasn't much at all.
-With these open, I turned on the water pump as suggested on one website I had read. Water drained from the blue hose for quite a while. Being nervous about burning out the water pump, I shut it off after about a minute despite water still coming out of the blue hose.
-I closed up both hoses, the grey and black tank, and the hot water heater.
-Inside the trailer I located the hot water bypass valve and closed it. It wasn't positioned where I thought it made sense as a bypass, but there was only one valve, so I'm sure it was it.
-I opened all of the faucets.
-I connected the air compressor (a 6 gallon pancake) via a 1/4" adapter to hose to 1/4" adapter, quick connect, hose adapter, male to male hose coupler, and the city inlet.
-I turned on the air compressor with the regulator all the way open and let it go till it shut off. Once it shut off, I opened the regulator until it got to 30 PSI. It started back up fairly quickly, but eventually the pressure began to dip below 30 PSI.
-I shut off all of the faucets except one and let the compressor catch up, then went around to the faucets one by one but always opening the next faucet before closing the first. The pressure kept up better, but still seemed to be struggling.
-Next I tried lowering the regulator to about 15 PSI and shutting all of the faucets to see what would happen. When I was confident it wouldn't exceed the 15 PSI, I opened the regulator again, but this time to 40 PSI. I went around one by one to each faucet, again. This time I closed one before opening the next and gave the compressor time to catch up. I did the sink, bathroom sink, toilet, hot and cold through the faucet in tub, hot and cold through the shower head, then the outside shower. At this point I felt fairly confident.
-I unhooked the compressor and closed all the faucets and poured 1 gallon of antifreeze total into the sink, bathroom sink, tub, and toilet (leaving some in the closed toilet to keep the seal from cracking).
-I once again emptied the grey and black tanks.
So how'd I do? One question I have is about the red hose. Another is about a buzzing/humming nose that started about 5-10 seconds after opening each faucet that seemed to come from the city water inlet and/or the couplers I used. Any idea what that might have been?
I've already thought that I should probably open at least one faucet and I need to make sure I closed the pressure relief valve. Anything else I should have done? Should I have ended with draining or blowing out the low point drain?
I'm concerned about the water pump. I'm not sure if I cleared it of water since water was still coming out of the low point drain. If I were to run it a bit now, where would that water go? I assume it would go to one of the faucets and I would then need to blow out the lines again? Should I take the time to find the pump, unhook it from the lines, and run it?
I've taken it to our storage site which does not have power, so I'm hoping I did things sufficiently well.
Sorry for the long post from a newbie!
