Subject: Re: [a/s] Water pipes in winter
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 1999 18:24:42 -0700
From: Susi and John Burchard <saluqi@ix.netcom.com>
Reply-To: airstream@airstream.net

Patrick Ewing wrote:

> Good question---- I've thought a lot about this myself. The way I see it is
> that the trailer is insulated and with all the movement going down the road the
> water will tend to move a little. If the weather were down in the 20's or lower
> I would consider stopping every so often and warm it up in there. I do know
> that a lot of folks have traveled during cold weather with no freeze up
> problems if they are careful.

I still remember the first trip we made in our newly acquired (but far from new) Argosy motorhome in January/February 1994. Pulled out of Rhode Island and first ran into a big flatbed truck jackknifed on glare ice on the only highway out of town (US 6 in a rural area, trees on both sides). I had a toad and first had to back up for about half a mile -- I said no way, would have to unhitch first, the cops were less than helpful, it was bitter cold, anyway we finally got out of there without bending anything. Thus delayed we ended up going over the top of the Poconos into Wilkes-Barre late in the evening with an actual air temperature of about minus 30 and a 50 knot gale ... I think the windchill was about minus
150 ...and the furnace didn't work ... so we ended up in a motel for the night. If the MH had not still been winterized, with antifreeze in everything, all the pipes would have burst while we were still driving. Then in the morning it turned out the motel was down in a dip and no way were we going to get up that slippery ice ...detached 4WD toad, broke out truck-sized tow strap and after hours of frigging around in the freezing cold managed to get out of that hole and back on the road ... on that trip the first place we got to that was not sub freezing was Amarillo TX. Next night in Gallup NM everything froze again, had to go all the way to Seligman AZ to get out of freezing weather (had new circuit board put in furnace in
Flagstaff, left there in a couple of feet of snow and a howling blizzard ...).

Thereafter have developed a distinct preference for the southern route in winter ... straight down 81 all the way to Tennessee, stop for reorientation (fried catfish, okra, hushpuppies) then hit 40 west.

John

Susi and John Burchard
Tepe Gawra Salukis
saluqi@ix.netcom.com