Flooded bathroom

Thank all of you so much I am glad I found this forum. My camper is pretty old a 1992 and I live in south Louisiana where we are not used to all this freezing stuff. I was told to drip my water by my dad be because that's what we are supposed to do. Well I thought better 2 days ago and decided to just shut off the water at my outside valve and...it burst. Water everywhere outside my camper And the city had to come shut it off. Eventually had to call dad who asked" did you you drip your water?" And I had to say no and told him what I did but luckily I am not disowned . Gratefully I ran into a friend from church while I was there praying for grace in this trying time and my pipe got fixed without my dad having to drive an hour to do it. Oh and I'm joking about the disowning part. Sometimes I feel like that but my parents love me no matter how much a pain I can be when I need to be rescued.

Here in central FL, at freezing temps, I just usually dump a gallon of pink stuff in each tank, valves closed. One night a neighbor suggested just leaving the gray valve open and trickle water. OK. At 4 a.m. DH woke me up,
something wrong with toilet... burping back at him. Checked gauge monitor real fast, yup... on red. Went outside and pulled valve. Turned off water into "GRAY" tank. Called mfg that morning... we had the only model of that brand which the bathroom sink drained into the black tank. Don't drip water anymore!

ford truck guy wrote:
My bathroom and kitchen faucets drain into my GREY tank.. Could you have had an almost full grey tank before ??

All depends on the maker. Both my bathroom sinks drain to their respective black tanks. Shower to gray #1 and kitchen sink to gray #2. Think it's suppose to ensure adequate dilution in the black tanks. GB verified it for me when she left the tap open in the master bath. Luckily I had recently dumped tanks and caught it before a mishap.

Any time water is running, it still has to lose a LOT more heat energy to make the phase change from liquid to solid. If you keep it running, you are continually replacing the water before it has time to lose enough heat to freeze. Thus running water does not freeze as READILY as standing water.

BUT if ambient temps are cold enough, the running water will lose enough heat to make the phase change really fast, and then the line will indeed freeze up. Or the river will freeze over.

NanciL wrote:

WyoTraveler wrote:

Old-Biscuit wrote:
Sounds like bathroom sink drains into black tank and you overfilled it which then leaked out from toilet....either around floor flange gasket or toilet pedestal

Leaving faucet trickle is not a good idea to begin with.

Furnace running/maintaining a comfortable temp inside rv works.
Opening lower cabinet doors at night helps increase warm air circulation around pipes

IF you can't keep trailer plumbing above freezing then drain system

Absolutely correct. Any person living in the west can tell you even waterfalls and moving bodies of water can freeze. That water trickle not freezing is a myth.

You might want to tell my spring water at elevation 3200 feet that.
Any time the temperature is below 26 degrees with a high wind, I open the bathroom shower faucet and let a little stream of water run.
I have the plug out of the trap and have it piped out to the side of the cabin. Many nights and days it is below zero with wind chills way below that and it never freezes. If I didn't do that the pipe coming down from the spring would freeze solid.
It is the same principal and is not a myth

Jack L

jack L

Your spring water comes out of the ground well above freezing--probably no less than 40 degrees--so keeping it running keeps relatively warm water moving through the pipe.

Before water can freeze, it has to get down to 32 degrees and THEN lose a lot more heat to make the phase change from liquid to solid.

OK and why not run the hot water?

My bathroom and kitchen faucets drain into my GREY tank.. Could you have had an almost full grey tank before ??

smkettner wrote:
While moving water can most certainly freeze I think the idea is the moving water will bring some heat from the source to avoid freezing. Not sure why people run the cold water.

As someone who grew up in a northern clime, let me explain: water running very slowly down a pipe requires longer time at lower temperature to freeze than water that is just sitting there. And the point is that even though the cold water is cold, it is NOT freezing cold, thus "warm" in comparison to the ambient.

I've lived in houses here in Virginia where the water pipes were foolishly placed in exterior walls. In those houses, there was no way to keep those pipes from freezing except leaving the water trickling when the temperature got below freezing for long periods. On several occasions there were several days in a row where the overnight low was in the single digits and the daily high was in the 20s, and the trickle prevented a freeze. I'm certain of that because once somebody shut off the second floor bathroom sink trickle, and that lone faucet froze up, but none of the others did (we had two bathroom sinks in that house on the second floor -- the one in the other bathroom was fine.)

WyoTraveler wrote:

Old-Biscuit wrote:
Sounds like bathroom sink drains into black tank and you overfilled it which then leaked out from toilet....either around floor flange gasket or toilet pedestal

Leaving faucet trickle is not a good idea to begin with.

Furnace running/maintaining a comfortable temp inside rv works.
Opening lower cabinet doors at night helps increase warm air circulation around pipes

IF you can't keep trailer plumbing above freezing then drain system

Absolutely correct. Any person living in the west can tell you even waterfalls and moving bodies of water can freeze. That water trickle not freezing is a myth.

You might want to tell my spring water at elevation 3200 feet that.
Any time the temperature is below 26 degrees with a high wind, I open the bathroom shower faucet and let a little stream of water run.
I have the plug out of the trap and have it piped out to the side of the cabin. Many nights and days it is below zero with wind chills way below that and it never freezes. If I didn't do that the pipe coming down from the spring would freeze solid.
It is the same principal and is not a myth

Jack L

jack L

Sorry to hear this happened. I'm picturing you had the gray drain valve open and went to sleep feeling that everything was taken care of. Definitely get it cleaned up as quickly as possible to prevent as much damage as you can.

It's too bad the manufacturers don't advise you that they have plumbed the bathroom sink this way. but I guess that warning is only good for the original purchaser anyway. I'll bet that the kitchen sink drains properly into the gray tank, but I would verify that before trusting it.