What a depressing day; We winterized the travel trailer today. Not because we wanted to but because some flukey weather is moving into the Dallas area. Usually we have 50’s at night this time of year. However, this Fall has been a mess; non-stop rain and cold fronts. As a result, I can’t even walk through the back yard anymore without boots on. Now the prediction is that we will have a few nights coming up where the temps will be below 30 degrees with wind chills in the mid to lower teens. That’s Good! Maybe I can turn the backyard into a skating rink!
After looking at the forecast this morning I decided to pull the trigger and take some precautions. I hooked up my compressor and blew all the lines out and then added antifreeze to the sink and shower traps. The water heater and grey/black tanks were already empty. I did not run any antifreeze in the water lines. I felt that I had all the water out of the lines from the compressed air. For some odd reason the water line running to the toilet always takes the longest time to blow out. I can’t explain this, it seems strange to me. Perhaps it is the lowest part of the cold water line that runs the length of the trailer. Total time from start to finish on winterizing was just under 45 minutes. The total cost for me was $2.25 for the one gallon of RV Antifreeze.
I haven’t taken a travel trailer to a dealership for winterizing since 1990. I quickly figured out what needed to be done, in what order, and began saving money by doing it myself. It’s a really straight forward process and to be quite honest, I trust myself more that I would trust any dealership to do it.
In Wisconsin I would typically winterize in late September or very early October. It was always cold up there by the time I winterized, almost to the point of throwing caution to the wind. However, I always winterized it before anything bad could happen; and I never had any issues with a trailer in the spring. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that I’ve saved thousands of dollars throughout the years doing this myself.
As I have mention in a previous blog, Dealerships will tell you that they offer a warranty on their work. So if they perform the winterization routine and you have a problem in the spring, they will cover any damage that results from not having winterized it correctly. I have no idea if they really would cover any damage, or if they would try to somehow blame the owner. In my mind there is a reason Dealerships offer this warranty; it’s very low risk to them because it’s not rocket science. Regardless, there is no shame in having a dealership winterize your unit; you need to do what allows you to sleep at night. If you are the least bit uncomfortable doing the winterizing, or you just can’t spare the time, then I would highly recommend you have it winterized by an RV Dealership or repair facility.
Failure to winterize your unit can cause more serious problems than just a broken water line. You could end up with a broken water heater, water pump, broken P-Traps, etc.; and much of what can break is hidden, so think of the time and cost to fix something that would have cost so little to protect.
We would still like to get out in the trailer but right now I can’t even get to the trailer because the yard is so soggy it would never support the weight of my Ram Pick-up. It’s been this way for the last eight weeks. Had I known this weather cycle would have stayed with us this long, I would have backed the trailer in. Then I would have avoided having to go through the yard to hook up. With the advancing cold front the soggy will soon be replaced with frozen.
You can see my dilemma
Well the only good news, if there is any at all, is that I don’t need to worry about pipes freezing and breaking with the cold snap. Still, I’d much rather be somewhere south enjoying the trailer than sitting in the house looking at it.
Seeing as there seems to be no end in sight to this weather…I have to start bracing myself for the ugly truth that the season may be over.
If your curious on how to winterize your travel trailer click here.
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