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Old 12-05-2009, 07:51 PM   #1
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Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

For those who have camped in winter months, have you had problems with your water lines freezing? I have a RB50 with 16 gallon tank. I have it drained now, but would like to use the water in the van for trips in the winter, and to use the hot plate heat exchanger for hot water in the van.

Looks like I could use Reflectixs around the water tank (on the sides and top at least) and maybe around or at least under the water lines inside the van body. If the water lines outside the van (under it) froze, but the lines inside did not, I don't see why the water pump wouldn't work. The hot plate exchanger is under the van, so the water lines going to it might freeze, and I plan to insulate those.

Also, I think I might try leaving the hinged door in front of the water tank open at night. The outlet for hot air from the Espar heater is close to this door. If I put something to divert the air to run along the front of this open door, the water tank (just inside the door) would be warmed as well.

Any feedback from actually winter time use?

Thanks,

Brian Rutherford

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Old 12-05-2009, 07:58 PM   #2
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

We don't have a great deal of wintertime camping experience but we have camped in temps as low as 15 degrees. We had the furnace on the lowest setting all night and had no problems with freezing. Before we went to bed I did drain the small external valve near the city water fill inlet.
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Old 12-05-2009, 10:58 PM   #3
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

I have camped in the winter in temps below freezing down to 0F and have not had any problems with freezing of the pipes or the water tank. I am less worried about the water tank, I think it will be fine in the van. But I will usually drain the water out of the flat plat and the outside water pipes. I have not been in the crazy sub 0F temps that occur in some areas for a long time. I have on several times forgotten to drain the pipes and Flat plate in below freezing temps and have not had any freeze up or burst on me.
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Old 12-06-2009, 07:01 AM   #4
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

We've camped in Yosemite several times while it snowed overnight. While the penthouse was pretty cold, it never got cold enough "downstairs" to turn the heater on which was set at 45 degrees. No problems even though I never even thought about draining the outside lines...
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Old 12-06-2009, 08:01 PM   #5
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

I also have never had too much trouble but run the water heater toward 3am and keep the cab espar fairly warm when its below 20 outside. Once I had a problem while driving in extreme cold. I think storage in cold weather is more of a problem. I've thought about using that stuff for water pipes but wondered if it would keep the lines from warming during a drive. I'd like to see a solution other than draining the system in temps like 15 degrees. They make 12 volt heating pads and strips, but the draw is way more than what I want. For shore power though they may be a reasonable solution. I use strips on large telescopes to keep dew off the front optics. Basically they are resistor strips that heat up by consuming power. http://www.dewbuster.com/heaters/heaters.html
http://www.modmyrv.com/2008/07/17/rv-ho ... ating-pads
It's too bad that the lines just hang out subject to cold and ice. During a drive in snow, ice cakes up in spots around the lines
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Old 12-14-2009, 09:52 PM   #6
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

I actually have a lot of experience with this. So much so that I've bought my own PEX tubing tools since I've had to replace the fittings on more than a few occasions.

A couple of times it was totally my fault for not draining the system. But, several times the lines froze and broke fittings even though I drained everything. (Single digit temps)

However, I now have a pretty "sure fire" way to make sure things don't freeze up. This is for those with a flat plate exchanger but I suspect it will work for anyone similarly.

The "weak link" in the system appears to be the fittings that have a plastic collar on them (like the attachment to the flat plate). The water freezes and tends to "pop off" the plastic collar and break it or at least make it leak.

Your van should have the "drain stopcocks" down somewhere near the flat plate or near the grey water outlet. Now, just opening these up and letting the water drain out works OK. However, the flat plate still has some water left in it and just enough to break the plastic fitting but not enough to rupture the exchanger.

The trick is to do the following:

1. Turn off water pump (duh)
2. Turn on the cold and hot water valves at the sink (open the faucet on both sides)
3. Go outside and open the RED drain stopcock only under the van.
4. At the sink, take the faucet, put your mouth around it and blow air into the faucet end until you are blowing air all the way through the system.
5. Go back outside and open the BLUE drain stopcock to let any residual water run out (should only take a few seconds)
6. Close both RED AND BLUE stopcock under the van
7. At the sink, turn the faucet off on both sides
7. Sleep soundly knowing your water lines aren't freezing.

NOTE: Do not turn the water pump back on until you are ready to use the water again in the morning or this will just fill all the lines back up with water.

Obviously this is easier with two people and takes a total of about 2 mins to complete. If you think you've been draining your water lines already, you will be amazed by the amount of water that comes out when you blow the lines as described above. You will realize that you were not getting half the water out of the system before.

Hope this helps someone....
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Old 12-15-2009, 12:06 AM   #7
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

You have seen those RV water blow out plugs right? I would think that would be a good method. I like your proceedure list. If air has to be shot through the faucet, mine is threaded and I'm sure you can rig the plug to adapt to it...at least you won't have to do an ear popping number on the faucet
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Old 12-15-2009, 07:44 AM   #8
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

I considered that but since there is so little tubing in the van it doesn't take too much pressure to clear the lines. At altitude you have to blow just enough to get a little tipsy.....
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Old 12-16-2009, 10:40 PM   #9
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

I have had huge freezing problems. I think it was me that alerted SMB to the fact that it's NOT safe to have water freeze in the heat exchangers. Maybe we should call that one "Ken's Recall." This pic is my Flatplate after I owned the system for two weeks. I only found the bulge in it because I uninstalled it to put it inside. My connections had cracked, which is why I was doing it.




So, I'll take this in quick parts:

1. Heat exchanger. I strongly argue that it is not acceptable for winter camping to have this outside. Not only to you have to go out in snowstorms to drain/fill, but if you forget to drain, and water freezes in there, it might rupture or cause a small leak between your (poisonous) ethylene glycol solution and your drinking water. Or it might not. This is exactly why SMB did the recall, added the valves, and went with a double wall exchanger. The problem is, if you forget to drain and it freezes... is it still safe? After the first freeze? Second? Third? Then you never know if you're slowly drinking undetectable amts of poison over time. That is not acceptable IMO. Of course, if you never let it freeze and always drain it, then you're fine. But draining it 2-3 times a day is not the convenience that I wanted.

Here's a pic of my flatplate moved inside, under the sink, and insulated. The black cylinder is an accumulator to keep the pump from constantly going on and off. Figured I might as well do it right (credit to the Badgers on that one).





2. Water tank. I had mine freeze, WHILE WE WERE SLEEPING IN THE VAN. Yes, the heater was on, but the water tank is on the floor. And it was cold out (Kirkwood, CA). And the hinged door was completely removed (so that skis could poke through). Water tank bottom froze, water lines on floor froze, and I think it did some minor damage to the pump as well? So, when I redid the water system and moved the heat exchanger inside, I put 1/4" of ethefoam under the tank, and that did the trick. Also moved my water lines off the floor (duh), kept them from contact with the metal sofa frame (duh), etc.



Here are all the left over PEX parts after I did my install. It really simplifies the system. Now that there are the extra drain valves, as delivered it's probably even more complicated.




Summary: as delivered, the SMB is fine for occasional not so cold camping, or one or two trips to the mountains in the winter. But if you're going to live in it skiing every weekend, it is not done properly. My guess is most people who buy SMBs just aren't into that kind of cold weather suffering!

--------------

Addendum: SMB won't put the flatplate inside the van because they consider THAT a safety hazard. They had one other model break in a van, spraying boiling hot engine coolant around, and generally wrecking a lot of the cabinets. I would argue that with a simply injection mold, one could make an outer "holding tank and spray shield" that would prevent this from happening (my locating under the sink and with insulation is my effective spray shield; I have no holding tank/tray though). Thus, I see the valves outside as a bandaid vs the right solution. Again, if you're not a constant, extreme cold weather camper, this isn't really an issue.
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Old 12-27-2009, 02:31 PM   #10
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Re: Water tank and lines freezing in winter?

Another solution for Sportsmobile's concern would be to use hard (metal) pipe for the coolant on the interior portion of the van. This would be easy to do and inexpensive.

John
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