Thread: Frozen
View Single Post
Old 02-17-2021, 01:45 AM   #6
TaoJones
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2021
Posts: 13
Quote:
Originally Posted by 4happyfeet View Post
We’re sitting pretty comfortable inside our 2019 41 RKSB4 MS at 6 degrees in Anna, TX. Furnace and fireplace are keeping us at 69 deg. Problem is that the sewer drainage hoses froze, even with heat strips wrapped around them. And now the water is off, even with a heated water hose. The galley gate valve is almost stuck. Having never been in record low temps before, I’m asking if anyone has had similar experiences, or are there things I could do better next time.
Often in the last ten years, I've lived year-round in my RV in western Colorado. Some winters have been incredibly mild, while others have occasionally been bitterly cold. I'm talking temperatures that got down to -15°f overnight and never went above freezing during the daytime for several days in a row.

Is your sewage drain hose the slinky kind? Those are OK most of the time, but can't really stand up to prolonged sub-freezing conditions. I once waited too long into the fall before deciding to head to Arizona for the winter. We had had several good snowstorms and very cold temps before I was ready to pack up and hit the road. My almost-new slinky sewage hose exploded into thousands of tiny pieces of plastic when I disconnected it and tried to coil it for storage.

I've never had trouble with my heated fresh water hose freezing up, but I have been without water in the morning on occasion. Every time, the problem was either at the 90° brass elbow the hose connected to before the water entered the city water inlet on the RV, or it was frozen up at the park's hydrant.

If it was my brass elbow, I quickly cleared that with boiling water in my kitchen sink, then did a better job of insulating it after hooking everything back up. If it was the park's fresh water hydrant, I'd call the manager's office and they'd send out a maintenance guy with a heat gun to thaw out the ice plug in their hydrant.

You mentioned that the park hydrant you're attached to is two feet below grade - are you certain that's enough depth to get below the frost line where you're located in your present freezing conditions? I'd suspect that as the location of any fresh water blockage first.

For your black and grey waste water drainage, I gather that your drainage hose is just lying on the ground. Do I understand that correctly, or do you have the drain hose elevated and sloped toward the sewer inlet? Leaving a drain pipe on the ground is just asking for trouble, IMO, even in warmer conditions - there's just no way to be sure your waste is making it all the way to the sewer inlet.

If you're in a position to do so, you're much better off using rigid ABS drain piping that's elevated at the RV-end and sloped toward the sewer inlet than using a slinky-type sewer hose that's just lying on the ground, IMO. People often assume that the liquid in the black and grey waste tanks is sufficient to move the solid waste all the way to the sewer inlet, but that's often just not true.

If the waste drain piping is lying on the ground and if it has any bends in it, then chances are good that solids have not all made it to the sewer inlet. Once that waste is "stuck" in the drainage hose, it serves as an obstruction that blocks other waste that's headed to the sewer. This isn't good.

And if there's solid waste blockage within the drainage hose AND the conditions are sub-freezing for extended periods, that blockage can even start to back up liquid waste, especially if the hose is lying on the ground and has any bends in it. Once that happens, the liquid waste will freeze and you'll have a problem on your hands that will probably require replacement of the drain hose.

If so, that's the time to put in a solid ABS drainage pipe that has as straight of a run to the sewer inlet as possible and that is sloped downward toward the inlet as much as possible.

Good luck with the cold weather and with fixing your water problems, happyfeet.

TJ
__________________
"Respect science, respect nature, respect each other." - Hal Harvey
TaoJones is offline   Reply With Quote