terrymullett
11-12-2019, 03:41 PM
We are keeping our new Cougar open and lived in as far into the season as we can - better to find at least some weaknesses now while there's still a salary coming in to fix them rather than wait until after I retire :-). Last night in Spring Hill Kansas we got down to 8 degrees and found the weakest link in our Climate Guard.
I was sure it would be the water line between the fresh tank and the pump, but nope.
At around 15 degrees outside temp we lost hot water in the galley island. A few hours later at around 10 degrees, the cold was out too. But all night and the next morning, with a low at 8 degrees that lasted for several hours, the water (hot and cold) stayed on in the bathroom. We could flush, shower, brush our teeth, and pull a pitcher of water to put in the Keurig.
Now I suspect a lot of you more experienced RV owners already know what the problem was, but we're newbies and it took a little while for it to dawn on us. Actually, it dawned on DW; I was still stumped when she started talking about the low point drains.
Although there is a big ugly blob of insulating foam where the drain tubes come out, still about 6 inches of each is exposed, including the end valves. Around mid afternoon, while the outside temp was still in the low 20s, she came up the idea that this was our problem. We had one of those red 250 watt incandescent heat bulbs in the barn we used years ago when we had goats and they always had their babies in there on the coldest day of the year. I dug that thing up and put it in a conical aluminum shop light, mounted it about a foot from the exposed tubes. Around 10 minutes later the cold water started flowing in the island, and a couple of minutes after that the hot flowed.
I'm pretty impressed that the main line from the tank didn't freeze up. Maybe a few degrees cooler and it would have. As I look down into the hole where the tank line comes up, and the hot and cold go down to the low point and to the island, I see coroplast where I wish I saw insulation. Still, we have no skirts, and the wind out of the north had been stiff and steady at 20 mph for more than a day, so we expected something might freeze up.
Next job is to figure out how to strengthen that weak point. We'd rather it not freeze to start with. Anybody have an effective low cost hack for this?
I was sure it would be the water line between the fresh tank and the pump, but nope.
At around 15 degrees outside temp we lost hot water in the galley island. A few hours later at around 10 degrees, the cold was out too. But all night and the next morning, with a low at 8 degrees that lasted for several hours, the water (hot and cold) stayed on in the bathroom. We could flush, shower, brush our teeth, and pull a pitcher of water to put in the Keurig.
Now I suspect a lot of you more experienced RV owners already know what the problem was, but we're newbies and it took a little while for it to dawn on us. Actually, it dawned on DW; I was still stumped when she started talking about the low point drains.
Although there is a big ugly blob of insulating foam where the drain tubes come out, still about 6 inches of each is exposed, including the end valves. Around mid afternoon, while the outside temp was still in the low 20s, she came up the idea that this was our problem. We had one of those red 250 watt incandescent heat bulbs in the barn we used years ago when we had goats and they always had their babies in there on the coldest day of the year. I dug that thing up and put it in a conical aluminum shop light, mounted it about a foot from the exposed tubes. Around 10 minutes later the cold water started flowing in the island, and a couple of minutes after that the hot flowed.
I'm pretty impressed that the main line from the tank didn't freeze up. Maybe a few degrees cooler and it would have. As I look down into the hole where the tank line comes up, and the hot and cold go down to the low point and to the island, I see coroplast where I wish I saw insulation. Still, we have no skirts, and the wind out of the north had been stiff and steady at 20 mph for more than a day, so we expected something might freeze up.
Next job is to figure out how to strengthen that weak point. We'd rather it not freeze to start with. Anybody have an effective low cost hack for this?