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Last Updated on August 23, 2024 by Paul Clayton
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How To Keep RV Pipes From Freezing?
Keeping your RV pipes from freezing is crucial for maintaining the longevity and functionality of your vehicle, especially during the colder months. This article, “How To Keep RV Pipes From Freezing? 10 Tips,” provides comprehensive details and practical advice on preventing this common issue.
Key Takeaways
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- Preventative Measures: To keep RV pipes from freezing, implement various insulation and heating methods, such as using heat tape, heaters on holding tanks, and skirting the RV.
- Internal Plumbing: Keep internal plumbing warm by maintaining airflow to areas like cabinets, and consider using the internal freshwater tank to avoid exposure to cold temperatures.
- Maintenance & Precautions: Regularly check connections, avoid letting holding tanks become full or empty, and protect all connections between the RV and the park’s utilities.
- Dealing with Frozen Pipes: If pipes freeze, carefully thaw them from the drain, keeping faucets open to allow water flow. Avoid using hot water to prevent damage.
The tips range from insulation methods and heating tapes to the importance of regular maintenance checks. These tips are designed to be easy to follow and implement, ensuring your RV remains in optimal condition throughout the winter.
In cold seasons, most people put their RVs away for storage, while a smaller share of RVers, if traveling, go south for warmer areas. However, there are a few people who embrace the adventure of traveling in winter!
While traveling in cold seasons has its charm, there are a whole bunch of new things that you will need to consider. Namely, a big concern in freezing temperatures is ensuring that your piping doesn’t get frozen.
How do you keep your RV pipes from freezing? Read on to gain a detailed understanding of “How To Keep RV Pipes From Freezing? 10 Tips”, and save yourself from the potential stress and cost of frozen pipes.
How To Keep RV Pipes From Freezing While Camping
Use Heat Tape on Hoses and Pipes
The simplest way to prevent your RV pipes and hoses from freezing is to apply heat tape to them. This option isn’t expensive, easy to implement, and quite effective. You should be able to buy heat tape from your local hardware store.
Heat tapes usually detect changes in temperature and heat up if it gets too cold. For effective operation, you need to secure the heat tape along the length of the hoses with electrical tape. Wrapping electrical tape around the hose every 1 foot should be good enough.
Once installed, the heat tape should prevent your pipes from freezing in various cold temperatures. However, the heat tape requires electricity, so you must meet its power requirements.
You may cover the hose and heat cable with insulation tubes and tape for added effect. No matter the expected temperature at the campsite, you should probably wrap your pipes in insulation just in case. Heat tapes do work, but they may fail in extra-cold temperatures.
Use heaters on Holding Tanks
You may protect your holding tanks from freezing the same way you would with pipes. You don’t necessarily have to do this, but if there is a risk of the RV holding tanks freezing, make sure to buy a holding tank heater. It works precisely like heat tape for pipes and hoses.
Keep the Internal Plumbing Warm
You may have never thought about this, but your internal plumbing may freeze in frigid temperatures, especially if your RV isn’t well-insulated.
To keep the internal piping warm, open your kitchen cabinets and the bathroom to let some warm air from other compartments in. If the interior of the RV is warm, this should prevent freezing.
You can keep the water moving in the plumbing for a little more protection. Allowing a small drip from faucets can help combat freezing not only in the interior plumbing but throughout the piping of the entire RV.
Use the Internal Freshwater Tank
It’s a good idea to fill your fresh water tank beforehand in warmer conditions to avoid exposing your RV piping to the cold while filling the tank at a campground. Your freshwater hose will be particularly susceptible to freezing in cold temperatures.
On the other hand, this means that you may need to limit your use of freshwater while out in the cold. But you might also need to deal with this while camping during colder seasons.
Heat areas susceptible to cold
If certain areas in your RV tend to freeze, you may want to add additional heating. An example of such an area is the water compartment, which contains water valves and is usually located in an exterior region of the RV. You will need to pay some extra attention to such spots.
A compact space heater should adequately protect the water compartment from freezing. Choose a heater that can be safely operated in small spaces.
Use antifreeze
Another viable option is using antifreeze, which is not added to holding tanks before storing the RV. There is a non-toxic type of antifreeze specifically designed for RV use. It is pink rather than green, like conventional antifreeze.
To use this antifreeze, completely drain your black water and gray holding tanks. Then, add a couple of quarts of the non-toxic antifreeze to the tanks. The amount of antifreeze you should add will depend on the size of your holding tanks, so consult the antifreeze’s instructions to add the right amount.
Added waste will eventually dilute the antifreeze, making it ineffective. Therefore, using a non-toxic antifreeze may not be the best option during longer trips unless you can safely empty the tanks and add new antifreeze.
Skirt your RV
Skirting the RV is an excellent way of protecting the plumbing beneath it, which is exposed to outdoor cold. However, several challenges must be overcome to ensure effective heat retention with an RV skirt.
Your RV skirt will need to be installed snugly so that there are no openings for the heat to escape through. In addition to choosing a proper skirt, you will need to select a parking spot that is more or less flat so that there are no openings in the RV skirt. You may also use insulation boards to cover them up.
Don’t allow your holding tanks to get empty or full
It would be best to prevent your holding tanks from getting full and not letting them get empty.
As you probably know, the volume of water increases when it freezes. The expanding water may crack if the holding tank is full or nearly full. Likewise, completely dumping your holding tanks will make them more likely to freeze. While this doesn’t mean that the tanks will get damaged, they will at least become unusable.
So, when using your holding tanks, please don’t allow them to get full. When they are close to being full, dump them so that they are filled around 1/4 of their capacity. This will prevent your tanks from freezing.
Keep the Valves Closed
Some people recommend keeping the valves partially open in freezing temperatures. This isn’t the best advice, though—on the contrary, you should keep all your valves closed to prevent flooding.
Freezing water in the RV holding tanks may push some mass out through the hoses, and if the valves aren’t closed, the wastewater will likely end up in a place it is not supposed to be. To prevent this, keep the valves closed in freezing weather.
Protect connections between the RV and the park’s utilities
You should generally avoid any hose connections between the RV and a park’s utilities in freezing weather, but if you have to use your fresh water hose, take measures to protect it from freezing.
One option is to protect the hose with heat tape, as described above, or use a heated freshwater hose. Insulating the hose with foam tubes could also be effective. Another way to keep the hose from freezing is to ensure a downward slope from your RV to the drain by mounting sewer hose supports at varying heights.
This video has been included to clarify the topic. Credit goes to Wanderful Revolution
What do you do if your plumbing nonetheless freezes?
No matter how well-prepared your RV is for freezing temperatures, you may be unable to avoid freezing in your plumbing. If this does happen to you while camping, you could do a couple of things to prevent damage to the RV plumbing and make it usable again.
First, try to find where the freezing occurred. Go outside and check the RV sewer hose. Thaw it at the drain and back towards the sewer outlet if it feels frozen. You may use a hair dryer or heat tape to thaw the frozen pipe.
It would be best to start from the drain to prevent tank damage. When pipes thaw, water will try to burst out, so you should first clear the way so that the water from holding tanks can easily escape without damaging anything.
Due to the same reason, keep the faucets slightly open to allow water to flow freely.
If you also suspect the holding tanks are frozen, check them and place some heating below to thaw them.
Check whether it froze if you haven’t put your freshwater hose away. If it did, turn off the spigot and disconnect the hose from the RV. Defrost the hose the same way you did with the sewer hose. After defrosting the hose, you may open your utility bay and thaw the connection with a hairdryer.
Then, you need to check things inside. Reconnect all the hoses and check 
each water source individually to see if they work. This little troubleshooting will help you spot problematic areas that need treatment.
Don’t flush your pipes with hot water since the temperature difference can cause cracks in the plumbing.
Once the RV’s water is running, check its plumbing for leaks. If there are, drain your holding tanks and unplug your RV from any water sources to address the leak issue. If you don’t repair it immediately, things may get worse.
Wrapping Up
The prevention of RV pipes from freezing is a significant concern for RV owners, especially during the cold winter months. Here’s how to keep RV pipes that can be effectively employed from freezing. Firstly, it is essential to insulate the pipes as the additional layer can help retain heat and ward off cold temperatures.
Secondly, heat tape on pipes can be a robust measure against freezing. It’s an electrically powered device that emits heat to keep the pipes warm.
It’s also beneficial to use antifreeze in your RV plumbing system, but ensure it’s nontoxic and safe for RV use. Using an indoor-safe propane heater can also help keep the interior of the RV warm enough to prevent freezing. Moreover, keeping the RV moving can prevent water from freezing due to the constant motion.
Keeping cabinet doors open can allow warmer air to circulate the pipes. Another efficient method is using a heated water hose, which keeps water flowing smoothly even in freezing temperatures. It’s also advisable to use a skirt around the base of your RV to block cold air from reaching your pipes.
Furthermore, regularly checking weather forecasts can help you be prepared for sudden temperature drops. Lastly, draining your pipes and water tanks can prevent freezing and bursting when it’s freezing, and you are not using water.
In conclusion, understanding how to keep RV pipes from freezing demands proactive and reactive approaches. Following these 10 tips will undoubtedly help you maintain your RV’s plumbing system during the chilly winter months.
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