A trailer someone is living in through winter needs a different kind of care than one parked in a storage lot. The good news: it comes down to a handful of habits, and none of them are hard.
A trailer someone is living in through winter needs a different kind of care than one parked in a storage lot. The good news: it comes down to a handful of habits, and none of them are hard.
When people say "winterize," they usually mean draining every drop of water out of a trailer and filling the lines with antifreeze so it can sit empty until spring. You cannot do that to a trailer someone is living in. You need running water.
What you want instead is freeze protection: keep the heat on, keep the water moving, and keep the cold away from the pipes. That is what this page is about.
Nearly every winter problem starts in one of three places.
The water hose is the one that gets people. It is a thin line of standing water sitting out in the open air, so it freezes long before anything inside does. If your hose is not wrapped or heated, tell us before the first hard freeze rather than after it.
Underneath is where your tanks and pipes live. They are better protected than the hose, but not by much, especially with wind blowing under the trailer.
The sewer hose should run downhill the whole way to the hookup, with nothing standing in it. A hose with waste sitting in it will freeze solid, and then you cannot empty your tanks at all.
When you hear a hard freeze is coming, run down that list the day before. It takes about ten minutes and it is the difference between a normal week and a cold morning with no water.
Set the thermostat and leave it there. The instinct is to turn the heat down when you head out for the day, but a trailer cools off much faster than a house, and the pipes are the first thing to feel it. Leaving it set costs a little more and prevents a lot.
Open the cabinet doors under the sinks on cold nights. That lets warm room air reach the pipes tucked behind them.
If your heat quits in freezing weather, that is not a wait-until-Monday problem. Tell us right away.
Everything from the tank care page still applies in winter, with a few additions.
Most of the time it is the hose, not the trailer, and it thaws on its own as the day warms up.
Call us right away if you have no heat, you see water where it should not be, or a tank is frozen solid. Those need us, not a workaround. Open a support request or call the number at the top of this page.
| Do | Do not |
|---|---|
| Leave the thermostat set, even when you are out | Turn the heat off to save a little propane |
| Wrap or heat the water hose before the cold | Wait until it freezes to mention the hose |
| Let a faucet drip on hard-freeze nights | Worry that a slow drip is wasteful |
| Empty the tanks before a hard freeze | Let the tanks sit full in freezing weather |
| Keep the sewer hose sloped and empty | Leave waste standing in the hose |
| Call us the moment the heat quits | Thaw anything with a torch or open flame |
Handle one cold snap well and the rest of the winter tends to look after itself.
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