De-winterizing and Fresh Water Sanitization Guides

I know this thread has gone s little cold, but here goes anyway. How do you store your unit during the summer? IOW, do you keep the bleach mix in your tank and pipes while unit sits in the 99 degree sun? Or after sanitizing do you drain everything until you go out?
Something tells me the bleach will only hold for so long.....


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Cabindoc said:

I know this thread has gone s little cold, but here goes anyway. How do you store your unit during the summer? IOW, do you keep the bleach mix in your tank and pipes while unit sits in the 99 degree sun? Or after sanitizing do you drain everything until you go out?
Something tells me the bleach will only hold for so long.....

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I generally only do the bleach thing (ie.- sanitizing the water system) at the very beginning of the camping season when dewinterizing.

If we kept our trailer at a storage lot I would drain everything until we were going to go camping again.

But since we keep our Prowler in our side yard I leave water in it as we have it all set up, level, and all the slides out.

We often stay in it just because we can and we also use it as our guest house when visitors are here.

Of course, we use the water sparingly and the toilet rarely, but since we take it on the road at least once a month during the summer camping season we can drain the tanks then.

FrontRangeTraveler said:

The water is coming down the outside of the PEX lines where they protrude through the underbelly liner. I don't think I have the skill to remove that liner and start looking for leaks. This really stinks on a 6 month old rig where the water system was never used even once until this week when I started de-winterizing it.


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So this turned into quite an adventure...

We dry camped with bottled water on our Memorial Day trip and didn't use the Mallard's water system at all, not even the toilet. During that trip we also discovered the AC didn't work (just the fan).

So we took it to Camping World in the Springs and they confirmed the AC did not work (and had no coolant) and ordered a replacement unit. They also found bad wiring on the water heater and fixed that. Having no AC pretty much killed our Independence Day trip. As of this writing, the AC had been on order is since roughly 6/30 and just came in 7/14. And the story gets better...

The Camping World in the Springs had the rig for five days and said they replaced six fittings and portions of water lines (hot and cold) due to freeze damage, then proceeded to tell us the freeze damage wasn't covered under warranty since they didn't de-winterize it. I explained that Camping World of Golden winterized our Mallard before delivery (and without asking us what our preference would be), and that we never got to see that it ever worked properly during the walk-through. And furthermore, we never ran a drop of water through the system until May of this year.

Long story short(er), the Golden store wouldn't cover the "freeze damage" repairs, so I fired off a letter to the CEO of Camping World/Good Sam referring to their literature that came with our Good Sam Elite membership that stressed wanting all customers to be "completely satisfied" and to receive the absolute best customer service experience.

The letter stressed the fact that the Golden store winterized our Mallard and that we had not used any part of the water system at all, EVER, since we bought the rig six months prior, so I didn't see how any freeze damage could possibly have been our fault. We also expressed our dissatisfaction at having a bad AC unit and bad water heater wiring on a new rig, and having to potentially leave the TT with Camping World for several weeks just to "get in line" for service. Fortunately, within a few days the Golden store covered the "freeze damage" repairs costs and I'm dropping it off Wednesday to get the AC fixed.

We might actually get the full use of our Mallard the next time we take it camping, and it's only been nine months since we bought it. I wish I had know about and used Oregon_Camper's delivery day checklist (or any good checklist) back then. For anyone buying a new or used rig, do yourself a favor and make the dealer prove that they're delivering what you expect, arm yourself with the knowledge to know what you should expect, and accept nothing less.


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If Camping World isn't ready to step up on the freeze damage, you might remind them that the factory winterizes trailers before shipping. There's no need to winterize again unless they put water into the trailer for some reason.

And you can always call Heartland for help on the issue. Call Heartland Customer Service at 877-262-8032 / 574-262-8030. Have your VIN # ready.

danemayer said:

If Camping World isn't ready to step up on the freeze damage, you might remind them that the factory winterizes trailers before shipping. There's no need to winterize again unless they put water into the trailer for some reason.

And you can always call Heartland for help on the issue. Call Heartland Customer Service at 877-262-8032 / 574-262-8030. Have your VIN # ready.

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That makes me wonder if Camping World did winterize it. We were just told it was winterized, and they said nothing about it coming from the factory winterized. Either way, the process apparently failed to protect the water lines. Knowing that, I would think Camping World would have taken it up with Heartland, not the Golden store.

Fortunately, Camping World did step up, but only after weeks of frustration and a dissatisfied customer letter. It didn't come to that point, but we were ready to take the matter to Heartland if we didn't get fair action from Camping World.

And for anyone dealing with the CW location in Colorado Springs, Darren "Diesel" Heese is their warranty guy, and he treated us well. He didn't charge us for the freeze repairs after I explained the situation, and appealed to the Golden store. Even after Golden refused to cover the repairs, no one bothered us for payment, perhaps because they knew we were taking it "up the ladder" at that point.

We would have liked more timely communication from the repair folks at the Colorado Springs CW (like what was wrong BEFORE they fixed it), but Diesel himself was straight up and fair with us.

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Camping World/Good Sam's has a corporate office in Golden in case anyone here didn't know that.

I've dealt with them on a couple of items in the past year or so.

JohnD said:

Camping World/Good Sam's has a corporate office in Golden in case anyone here didn't know that.

I've dealt with them on a couple of items in the past year or so.

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Good to know, thanks.

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