EMERGENCY WINTERIZING

 First - THIS IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR WINTER-LONG  WINTERIZING. Emergency winterizing is when you find out the weather is going to change dramatically and get cold to the point of freezing that night or the next day and you do not have time to completely winterize before the temperatures drop! If you have time to winterize properly then follow the directions in our article: "Winterizing: The Definitive Step by Step Guide."  

Something that is important to understand is the weather has changed considerably in the past five or more years. Areas that never got cold or saw snow  or ice or had severe storms that bring tornadoes to areas that never had any of this in the past - has been experiencing it all in recent years - and especially in this past year. Thinking that you have never had to winterize before so why start now - well there is good reason to start now.  And those who think - it can't happen to me or here -  you are betting on the cost of repairs of your Roadtrek if you take a chance.

Winterizing is necessary when the temperatures will go to 28 degrees or colder for two nights in a row with the days NOT going up to at least 40 degrees or higher.  This came to us from a Roadtrek trained RV service technician. It is a good guideline to remember and be prepared to deal with - especially when you find this out when there is little time to winterize fully. IF THE TEMPERATURES DO THIS FOR MORE THAN TWO DAYS IN A ROW OR THE TEMPERATURES DROP EVEN LOWER - AND YOU KNOW IT IS COMING - WINTERIZE FULLY!

 1) WATER PUMP OFF - Inside open the sink - hot and cold and let it drain out. Open the shower hot and cold side and with the shower nozzle in the sink, let the shower hose drain out into the sink.  Flush the toilet.  Go outside and open the hot and cold side of the outside shower - let that pour to the ground.

2) Empty your exterior fresh tank. (It is a good idea to also empty your interior fresh tank, if you have a two fresh tank system (190, 210). The reason for this is you do not want any water inside as you will not be able to use the water anyway as it must NOT go down any drain including the toilet. You could leave the interior tank full if you want.) If you leave water in the interior fresh tank (two fresh tank system) PUT THE SUMMER MODE/WINTER MODE VALVES IN WINTER MODE! OTHER WISE KEEP THEM IN SUMMER MODE or the inside tank will not drain!!!

3) Dump your black tank and your grey tank.  When done, lift the macerator hose - or the gravity dump hose up off the ground and let any water remaining in the hose to drain out.

3) Remove the anode rod from your hot water heater tank and empty the water out of the hot water heater tank. (Inside the tank is insulated in foam, but outside behind the hot water tank vent the tank is exposed to the cold so it is best to dump this tank to prevent it from freezing.) 

4) Go inside the Roadtrek. Open EVERY inside cabinet door where there is anything related to water inside - pipes, toilet, hot water tank, water pump, under the sink, and especially the interior water tank IF you have one. 

5) Turn on the propane for your Roadtrek. If it was not on before follow this article if you do not know how.

6) Turn on the furnace. This is how to turn on the furnace if you do not know how. Put the furnace on HI and AUTO on the thermostat - turn the heat up to a little more than you would find comfortable. If you are not going to be inside the Roadtrek then put the thermostat up to 85. This is going to be the source of heat from keeping the inside of your Roadtrek's pipes from freezing. 

 7) Do not open any windows or and only open the van doors briefly if you must.  The heat MUST stay inside. 

DONE!

BE AWARE that this will marginally protect the water pipes and the macerator outside under the van.  Emptying the tanks will allow enough room inside the tanks that any little amount of water that remains in the tanks will have room to expand if that water freezes.  What is in the pipes  should have flowed out in the process - but there are no guarantees and Meryl and Me cannot be responsible for any damage that occurs. 

NOW WHAT? We are in our Roadtrek with no water or toilet - what are we supposed to do? This involves some prior preparation with a few things that you will need to have with you.

FIRST - TOILET -  Putting RV antifreeze to flush the toilet is not a solution as some believe. We did some experimental research to see what happens when water (even urine) and RV antifreeze mix. The result is frozen solid RV antifreeze that expands just like water.  So what to do. This is something that is  great thing to keep in every Roadtrek, especially those that have a macerator. They are called by RVer's "wag bags". They are available to buy under various brand names on line or at stores that sell camping supplies -  Rei, Cabella's, Bass Pro Shops, Camping World, Dick's Sporting Goods, (at one time Walmart but I have not seen them there in several years) - and Amazon.   Get these before you need them because when you need them, without one of these stores nearby, you will not find them.  This is the one we have bought and there are always two boxes in our Roadtrek - Reliance Double Doodie Toilet Waste Bags. These are made for camping toilets that basically are just a bucket with a seat. They fit perfectly into the open toilet bowl in a Roadtrek Open the bag, put it in the empty toilet bowl, put the excess on top over the edge of the bowl and close the seat down on top. The bag stays in place. Do whatever you have to do into the bag. The bag is two layers of Mylar each with a zip closure. Inside the bag there is a chemical that turns liquid into gel and a deodorizer.  When done close the toilet lid - for liquids there is no odor and one bag can be used several times -  it will get you through the night. . For the other you may want to put in a new bag. All you do it take the open end of the bag - close the inner bag and then close the outer bag sealing it tight with the zip lock closures. These bags are legal to dispose of in any garbage container. Throw away the old bag and put a new bag into the toilet. With those with macerators - if your macerator breaks - this is going to make your life easier in your Roadtrek until you can get it fixed. On the last day of a trip on your way home and you dumped your tanks before you started home -  these come in really handy when you need to go and don't want to have to dump your tank again when you get home!

That takes care of the toilet. Now you need water.  A gallon of bottle water in Walmart store is one dollar US. Buy a few bottles before you leave on a trip when it can possibly get cold - and if you don't there is a Walmart a few miles from just about anywhere.  BUT the water cannot go down ANY DRAIN! So what you also want to get is a small sink basin - a few dollars also in Walmart.  PUT THE BASIN IN THE SINK!  There are usually two size basins - get the smaller one.    We found a Sterilite box with a handled lid that fit perfectly in the sink -  move the faucet out of the way and it goes right in. This makes it even easier to empty as I cut a hole at one corner of the lid, take it out with the handle and the latches closing the lid on the box and carry it out of the Roadtrek and where you have to take it to empty it - a restroom sink  or on the ground outside. All water is poured over the basin or the box and never into the sink to the drain. Wash in the basin or over the box.  For thousands of years before inside running water, this was what people did! 😉

 

That is it! Not a big deal if you are prepared! WHEN YOU GET HOME OR AS SOON AS YOU CAN WINTERIZE FULLY.

If you have a question - email with the link in the right column. 

HOW I GOT MY BLACK TANK SENSORS TO READ ACCURATELY

The infamous black tank sensors on the Roadtrek are well known for never reading accurately. I found this out soon after I bought my 2011 190 Popular new. I even brought it back to the Roadtrek dealer's service department to have them "fixed" and the RT service tech replaced two of them - which involved leaving the old bottom two sensors in place as he said they cannot come out and installing two others next to the originals and moving the wires from the old ones to the new ones. This worked for about a day and then the same things as before started to happen.  When the black tank was empty the monitor panel would read that it was 2/3 full. Then with just a little water added to the black tank the monitor panel would read full.  During a single day the monitor panel would change - from 2/3 to full and back to 2/.3 without anything being added to the tank or taken out of the tank. They just did not work!  I should add all of the other water sensors did work accurately on my Roadtrek - the two fresh water tanks and the grey tank have always been accurate. 

I tried all the things recommended to make them work. I flushed the tank repeatedly with clean water - still the same. I used various tank additives including borax and detergent and commercial tank cleaners that say they also clean sensors -  no difference. I bought a tank wand that attaches to a garden hose that is connected to an outdoor spigot - all brought into the RT through an open door, The wand goes down into the tank - this was a flexible wand (they are not all flexible) because the black tank is not straight down the toilet drain into the black tank pipe. There is an on/off valve on the wand to shut off and turn on the water flow - which is coming out at some pressure.  You open the toilet flap and keep your foot on the pedal as if the flap shuts on the wand the flap breaks. You put the wand down into the drain and move it around and up and down to "pressure" wash the inside of the black tank.  And if you happen to move it up too high from the hole in the toilet the water from the nozzle splashed on your face.  This, too, did not work. 

I eventually gave up as many Roadtrek owners do and on a trip we counted how many days it took us to fill the black tank with average use. It came down to between four and five days which was enough for us to know that once you get to four days dump the tanks. If the days are hot summer days just before it needed to be dumped it was possible to get a small whiff of odor when flushing the toilet when the flap opened.  I also found that if you look down the open flap in the toilet with a flashlight when the tank is really full you can see the water coming up from the tank just below the toilet flap. The problem with this is it is too easy to drop the flashlight down into the black tank which is a lot more trouble than just having a full black tank. (I never did this - I put a flashlight on a cord that fit around my wrist.) I have never put a bag of crushed ice into the black tank and drove around. Big RVs say this works BUT if your Roadtrek has a macerator and do this and you are not sure if all of the ice has melted completely - and you try to dump with ice still coming out into the macerator - you will break the macerator.

Sometimes things happen accidentally - and this article is about one of those happenings. I have not written about this until now because I wanted to be sure it worked. This goes back to May 2019 and started in November of 2018. 

In November 2018 we started winterizing the Roadtrek - using the instructions of my own article - which has become well known.  It is always important to keep the black tank's interior wet and I have always put one gallon of water into the black tank during travel season to prevent anything left in the tank from drying out and building up which will clog the output of the black tank. When we started winterizing I knew that since our last trip at the end of October there was one gallon of water in the black tank. We started by getting all of the water out of the fresh tanks and then started to dump the black tank of that one gallon of water.  We got a bucket and pointed the macerator hose in - and pushed the macerator button and we could hear the macerator running and there was a spurt from the hose and then nothing. The motor ran - the macerator was not pumping. We tried various things - change the angle the RT was sitting on - nope. Tried turning the macerator unclog handle - it turned with no resistance - nope. And then we smelled burning coming from the macerator and just gave up.  It was November. There was no way we were going to get to any RV shop that could fix this and we just would have to wait until the Spring.  But what to do about the black tank until then.  When I winterize I replace the one gallon of water in the black tank to keep it wet with one gallon of RV antifreeze poured down into the tank through the toilet. I decided that in addition to the winterizing RV antifreeze that went through the pipes to the toilet I would add TWO gallons of RV antifreeze into the black tank for the winter - keeping my fingers crossed that in the Spring there would be no problems from the cold winter other than needing to get the macerator replaced. 

The Roadtrek sat on our driveway like that the entire winter and in late April 2019 we had an appointment at the RV dealer we bought the RT in that is located in Pennsylvania - two states away - for the macerator to be replaced. (There is an article about that in April and May 2019 on this site.)

An amazing thing happened when the service shop installed the new macerator and dumped the black tank of the two gallons of RV antifreeze. THE BLACK TANK READ EMPTY!  

I figured that this was only temporary and with use the black tank sensors would go back to their  old tricks and do what they were so well known to do.  We took a trip that July - the black tanks were empty at the start of the trip. The black tank holds ten gallons.  With a  day plus  of  use the monitor panel showed 1/3 full -  right on what it should be. A day or so more and it went to 2/3. As I said earlier in this article - we calculated that we fill the black tank in four to five days.  At the end of the fourth day the black tank went to full. One way to find out if the black tank is really full is to put some water down the toilet as look in the pipe -  a little water should in the pipe that the black tank was really full!  The sensors worked. We dumped the tanks and they showed empty. Even with the gallon of clean water put down into the tank the sensors still showed empty - as they should! 

I have been putting one gallon of RV antifreeze down into the black tank over the winter and until we dewinterize in the Spring  and this never fixed the sensors.  Could it be that the two gallons made the difference?  This stayed from November into late April. I did not jump to conclusions. The variables from it working and prior - the RV antifreeze and the new macerator. Others have replaced their macerator and still have black tank sensors that do not read accurately.  The two plus gallons of RV Antifreeze into the black tank over about six months, I believe, is what has done it!

After the summer of 2019 Covid arrived, so travel was limited to not at all.  We live in an area that was very hard hit by the virus.  We were on lock down. There were a lot of deaths. Businesses were closed and supermarkets that were open had empty shelves.  But I still had to winterize the RT and in 2019 I put two gallons of RV antifreeze again into the black tank in addition to the antifreeze that went down into the tank winterizing. The empty black tank showed empty when before the antifreeze went in and just the two gallons of RV A/F, it still showed empty. As Covid lessened we took some day trips using the black tank. The sensors read correctly.  After dumping it showed empty - every time!

Recently we used the black tank a lot. It went to 1/3 and correctly after that to 2/3.  Before I dumped the tank I added water to the tank and took it to full - and it read full.  We dumped the tank - and it now reads empty. I tested this over three years plus - each time winterizing two gallons of RV antifreeze went into the tank between winterizing in the late Fall and dewinterizing in the Spring. The sensors are still reading accurately. 

 So what do you do if you want the same results? I do not know that if you vary the time period shorter that the RV antifreeze is in the tank, it will work for you. If you put it in and let is sit for a couple of weeks or even a month or two, I doubt it will work!  Put it in over six months and you should have the same results. No guarantees - but if it worked for me - it should work for you. Do I use any "special" antifreeze? No - unless you consider $3.99 a gallon antifreeze from Walmart special.  This same antifreeze has kept my plumbing safe over the winter for years. Will it work with other RV antifreeze? It should.  

 For eight bucks for a fix?! It is well worth the investment in two bottles of RV antifreeze and no more guessing if the tank is full! I feel I should put steps to this of what to do. OK - 

1) When winterizing - dump your black and grey tanks before you start along with draining your fresh tanks - all part of my winterizing step by step article.  This article is found here - https://roadtrek190popular.blogspot.com/2013/11/winterizing-your-roadtrek-step-by-step.html

2) Go through all the steps in the winterizing article through NUMBER 48. Instead of putting one gallon in as specified there put TWO GALLONS IN! Do this with or without a macerator. The macerator has nothing to do with fixing the sensors!

3) If you have no problem with your grey tank - as I  don't - then do not put any into the grey tank. If you want to, you certainly can but unless your sensors don't read accurately in your grey tank there is no need to do this. 

4) That is it! Leave it in until you de-winterize. While it is in the first time you do this you will still see sensors that are not working correctly. Once you dump your black tank in the Spring it should read EMPTY!