According to the National Weather Service, my location hit
negative 31 degrees Fahrenheit for the low during a cold snap. It was negative
31 for only a couple hours in the early morning, but then the highs the
following day were not even above zero. The days surrounding had similar lows
in the negative 24 to negative 28 degree range. Trailers in my neighborhood
were flooding the streets from frozen and cracked pipes. University buildings were
suffering frozen pipes. And many other houses in the town had frozen pipes. I
didn’t!
My winterizing work really got tested during this cold snap
and it all turned out to be a smashing success. My remake of my heated water
hose turned out to be great. It should be good down below negative 40, but hot
water came out of my faucet after negative 30, so that’s a major win.
Because of the ultra-cold temps, I did drain my tanks before
the snap and pour RV antifreeze into the waste tanks. The purpose of this was
to keep the pipes and valves from freezing and splitting. Since the water closet
compartment is heated by both the furnace and an electric heater, I wasn’t
worried, but wanted to cover all bases. Whether it was necessary to add RV
antifreeze, I’m not sure, but my guess is that it didn’t hurt.
Inside the coach, I was able to keep it at 59 degrees F even
during the coldest moments in the night because of the good insulation that
this model has and because of my use of both a propane furnace and electric
heaters to supplement the propane furnace. My electric heaters were set to their
lowest setting and I only use them to spread heat and to keep the furnace from
running constantly. At their lowest setting, the two electric heaters consume
725 W. That’s more energy than I would care to admit is needed, but in the
grand scheme it’s a tiny amount of energy to heat a house in negative 30 degree
F temperatures.
I made it through the first major cold snap with ease. The
problem is that winter had not even arrived when these temps arrived – it was
still fall. So, as winter begins and then progresses, we’ll see how many more
of those ultra-cold days are still in store. The condition that has me
concerned is the possibility of the power going out during a major cold snap.
If the power goes out, I have an emergency plan in place, but it will require
me to be home for the outage and to recognize the outage in time. In
double-digit negative temperatures and a power outage, my heated water hose has
about 15 minutes before ice crystals will start forming in the pipe.
