I thought that I would share my near miss "winterizing" our
Lil Snoozy. We wanted to have the water system available for January and February, as we have done in past years. I don't want to winterize then de-winterize a couple of months later, with all the hassle and flushing to get rid of the antifreeze. Following the same procedure as before, we remove the doors under the sink, sofa, and bed; and run an electric heater to keep the cabin at about 45 degrees. We keep a heating pad on low under the cassette toilet. This has worked fine in the past.
This year I moved the trailer from its country spot in WV to our house in MD and plugged everything back in. When the massive deep freeze was forecast on December 23, I rechecked everything that morning to make sure all was okay. I left the heater temp the same but bumped up the heating pad to medium. That night about 10 pm, the temperature had dropped from 53 to 10 degrees, and was on its way to 6 degrees.
I went out to check the trailer before bed and was horrified to find the inside temp in the trailer was also 10 degrees. Icicles hung from the kitchen faucet. The heater and heating pad were off and cold. The fresh water tank was slushy.
What happened? I forgot that the trailer is plugged into a 30 amp circuit in WV but only 15 amp in MD. In my laziness, I used the same 16 gauge extension cord that I have used for years to routinely power the trailer, plugged into a power strip by the garage door. This if fine for normal use but not for a heater on continuously and a heating pad on medium. I popped the breaker in the power strip. A 12 gauge cord plugged directly into the outlet solved the problem.
So how is the trailer? Remarkably, just fine. The inline pressure near the pump was over 30 pounds, but dropped as things thawed out. A few days later, when it was warmer, I kicked on the pump and pressured up the system. All systems ran normally, including the toilet electric flush valve. No
leaks anywhere. Pressure dropped a couple of pounds over a few days, but that is normal.
I credit the PEX tubing for a lot of our luck. Maybe things would have been worse if it had been below freezing for more than 12 hours or so. But with the cabinet doors removed, and 10 degrees inside, I tend to think all the lines, valves, and the pump were below freezing. The hot water heater was probably not frozen yet. Who knows?