Camping is a fun family event that may of us have experienced as kids and we carry those special memories with us forever. I am sure there also the silly mishaps that we also recall and perhaps even remind one another about when we get together with our family, friends, etc. I have such memories and now my wife and I are making our own in our new RV. This year we had the opportunity to travel to the Midwest during November for a few weeks for work, so why not take the new RV and have some fun also?
Of course we knew it would be cooler than the South so we checked the weather and packed accordingly, bringing warm clothes, an electric heater to supplement the RV heating system, and our coats (well I remembered but the wife didn’t).
One of our first surprises was the weather change, yep…it was about to drop to freezing and possibly snow! Since this was our first trip in the RV we had to think fast to protect the water hose and black tank from freezing! We opted to get some aluminum foil, heat tape, foam pipe protectors, RV antifreeze, and good old duct tape. I can say that our solution worked great, because it did snow! and we never had an issue with frozen pipes, how did we do it?
How to Protect the RV Water Hose From Freezing:
- Place as much of the water hose inside the RV compartment
- Wrap the hose that will be exposed to the elements with heavy duty aluminum foil
- Insert the heat tape against the length of hose against the aluminum foil
- Place the foam pipe wrap around the hose, (it will hold the heat tape against the hose)
- Close the foam pipe wrap and use duct tape to secure it together
- Plug in the heat tape – (we have a plug inside the RV water hook up/sewer drain area)
- We also added a ceramic heater inside the hook up area and placed a remote thermometer sensor in the space so we could monitor the temp in the area.
We stayed warm, the coach stayed warm underneath, the water was fine, and we took away the worry of what may have happened had we not prepped for the worst! The morale of our story is this…go out, experience life, figure out the challenges together, and live life…no matter what. We have more fond memories from this trip, seeing the beautiful fall colors, campfire marshmallows, and just being together somewhere new.
Go make some memories today, life happens too quickly to not embrace the beauty God has given us.
