RV winterizing

[Cooperman]

Hope some of you RV people can help. I’m in the process of winterizing an RV. I think I found a video of how to do most of the draining and blow out, but I can’t find anything on what to do with the toilet. Does the toilet need to be blown out? Is there a chemical I should put in it? This is not my RV, and I don’t have the manuals so I have to use You Tube.

[LPS]

Just dump some RV antifreeze in the toilet tank for good luck. 

[dutchboy]

I drain / blowout  my system. I'll plunger any excess water from the toilet if need be. Then dump RV anti-freeze in all the traps and the toilet bowl & tank.

[mike89]

I drain / blowout  my system. I'll plunger any excess water from the toilet if need be. Then dump RV anti-freeze in all the traps and the toilet bowl & tank.

that's how I did it when I had my 5th wheel...

[LPS]

If ever in doubt when buying different campers just open drain and let the water tank drain.  Then put 5 gallons of RV Antifreeze in the water tank.  That is enough to make up for a not so level water tanks.  Run all of the kitchen, bathroom, shower lines until you have pink coming out.  May take 2 or 3 tank flushes every spring but that is easy and you know anitfreeze has gotten to everything. Use some chlorine/hilex when you do your last rinse in the spring to make sure it is all disinfected.  We never drink out of the RV tanks but carry gallon jugs of safe water.  SO we do shower, wash dishes, flush toilet, etc with the RV water system.  Brush teeth, cook etc with bottled water. 

[Gunner55]

I drain / blowout  my system. I'll plunger any excess water from the toilet if need be. Then dump RV anti-freeze in all the traps and the toilet bowl & tank.

that's how I did it when I had my 5th wheel...

That's how we did the old cabin too, but we'd just use a big sponge on the toilet.

[markn]

I do my camper almost the same as lps, but instead of putting the anti-freeze  in the water tank I remove the hose from the tank to the pump and put the hose directly in the bottle of anti-freeze and draw it from there. That way there's none of the anti-freeze in the water tank. One camper I bought a seperate piece of hose just to do this and connected it straight to the water pump. When all is done there is a couple of inches of juice left in each jug and that goes down the sink(s) for the traps and the rest goes through the toliet to make sure the valve doesn't freeze up. I also have three way valves on the water heater so when winter comes I bypass the water heater with the anti-freeze and just remove the plug on it to drain it. It gets rid of the sweet weird smell of the hot water the next year. Hope that helps out cooperman.

[Cooperman]

Thanks all, I’ll give it a try today.

[LPS]

I had one camper set up the way Markn is saying.  I need to do that to this camper. 

[LPS]

I just ordered a Camco RV winterizing kit.  #36543  $12.75 and free shipping with Amazon Prime.  Look it up.  There is a great video showing how it works.  Thanks for the inspiration Markn.  It is a pain to get the antifreeze flushed out of my tank so this will be great.  My last camper had it and it was great!  Glad we had this talk!

[Jerkbiat]

That is also what I did to ours the first year I winterized it. Works slick. 

[markn]

  Glad to help out. Now I have to figure out how to do the newer camper we just bought. It's a "02" Cougar and has three waste tanks. A good Friday project I'm thinking.

[Leech~~]

I drain / blowout  my system. I'll plunger any excess water from the toilet if need be. Then dump RV anti-freeze in all the traps and the toilet bowl & tank.

Same. Just did our Breckenridge last weekend.