Decided to go camping over New Years at
The Vineyards Campground in Grapevine Texas.
Of course the reservation was made before the New Years forecast was available.
The temp only touched 30 Wednesday New Years morning, however Thursday morning qualified as a hard freeze at 20 with 30 MPH wind.
I learned a couple things:
- Leaving the water running at a slight trickle will not prevent the outside white water hose from completely freezing
- Leaving the water running at a slight trickle will freeze up the outside sewer hose outside and backup into your inside shower tub
The fam had to abandon ship Thursday morning leaving me for putaway and winterizing duties in sub-30 degree and a mighty cold wind from the north.
I managed putaway and thankfully thaw and dump with the assistance of a tank mounted propane heater and some abundant sunshine.
Thankfully the sewer hose only contained frozen water and coffee grounds.
Ok, now for the problem:
I first used a small air compressor to purge the lines inside. All good so far but knowing the pending onslaught of global warming this winter, I was prepared with 3 gallons of pink stuff on hand.
The first gallon happily flowed through open faucets throughout the camper since I left a couple faucet valves open.
The 2nd gallon, not so much. I left the pump running, sucking up the pink stuff, but this time I was working each faucet individually, so for some short durations the pink stuff was actually building up some pressure in the line.
Or so I thought.
For the 2nd gallon, the pink stuff was actually shooting out the city water connection onto the curb.
I'm pretty sure there is a checkvalve in the pipeworks to prevent this from happening.
Again with some assumptions here, I'm thinking the checkvalve broke during the freeze.
My question is - after you look at the pics - where is this checkvalve?
I placed an air blowout fitting on the city water connector to pink to finish the pink stuff distribution, but I figure this is going to be a PITA later if I don't fix it sooner.