View Single Post
Old 02-02-2020, 12:32 PM   #11
LewisB
Senior Member
 
LewisB's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Tucson
Posts: 822
Freezing Black Tank Valves

From personal experience, I won't mess with the black tank valve if the valve is out in the open and below freezing. We spent the night in Flagstaff, AZ at 6 degrees F once. I waited until the morning had warmed up (to about 25), got everything hooked up, pulled on the T-handle for the exposed black tank valve; pulled the handle right out of the frozen black tank valve. Now I had a full black tank with a broken valve that couldn't be opened. The only way to deal with it was to remove the dump hose, loosen the bolts on the black valve so as to be able to reach the plastic "gate" of the valve with needle-nosed pliers, and then slowly work the badly leaking valve and gate to drain the system into a 3 gallon tub which could be hand dumped. And of course, this only drained the liquid, not the solid waste. Changing that valve was NOT a lot of fun!

Our newer trailers have main tank dump valves that are protected underneath (somewhat) from freezing; I have a "last chance" valve on the very end of the dump system and these are out in the open, so they need to be left open in freezing conditions. And you can bet that I treat the main tank valves with a lot more respect in the cold weather.

My advice: if there is any way you can wait until it is NOT freezing, then put off dumping the black tank as long as possible.
__________________
Brad & Penny (50 years!)
2017 F350 DRW CC 4x4 Payload=5560
2018 Raptor 353TS
2019 Can Am Maverick Sport XRC - the "Blue Goose"

On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjc...yZ_w7jyofaPLVQ
LewisB is offline   Reply With Quote