Winterize with city hookup

dlochner · Nov 26, 2017

How does the water come out when he is not connected to city water? Is there water tank on board? There must be a pump onboard somewhere if there is a tank onboard.

If he has a hot water tank that needs to be drained and the bypassed. Remove the inlet hose and outlet hose from the tank and connect them together with a barbed coupling. If the inlet has a check valve, stick a wire tie into the check valve to open it and let the water drain. Some tanks have a separate drain valve at the bottom of the tank.

Assuming there is a tank, it should be pumped dry, then disconnect the hose on the upstream side of the pump. Connect a short section of hose between the upstream side of the pump and bucket full of anti-freeze. Turn on the pump and starting with the faucet furthest away from the pump run both the hot and cold water until it is pink, then move to the next closest valve and so forth.

While the hose is off the pump, air can be blown through the hose to dry it out.

Connect everything back up and you're good for the winter. Stick some tape on the faucets to remind people that it is winterized.

Head Sail · Nov 26, 2017

First off make sure your using propylene glycol not ethylene glycol in your fresh water system unless your trying to commit suicide. Next, it might work to simply blow out fresh water with air to winterize. Is "might" good enough for your friend? If not, run propylene glycol through the fresh water system.

BlowMeAway · Nov 26, 2017

I would think that any boat fresh water system that has a hookup for city water pressure and an internal holding tank with pump would work like any RV system. Perhaps this link may help to winterize the entire system.

http://gagscamperway.com/rv/winterize.htm

thinwater · Nov 26, 2017

njlarry said:
Searched but no luck on this.
Helping a friend winterize his power boat for the first time. (Searay) He has a shore side city water connection and a fitting to hook up his compressor to it. The plan is to blow the water out of the lines and only add antifreeze to the heads.
On my boat I have always just pumped antifreeze thru the fresh water pump till t came out full strength at the faucets but we never drink the onboard water. Not sure how a city water connection is plumbed to the boats freshwater system or how the freshwater pump gets freeze protected.
Any help would be most appreciated.

I hope he is aware that adding glycol to the bowl is not enough to winterize the head. It has to come in through the suction.

Blowing it out is good in theory, but unless you really understand the plumbing, and there are no restrictions (pumps, filters, strainers), there is a high probability of leaving some and having it settle in low spots. The PO on my boat did that, and did lots of damage over the years.

It can be done, and can be the best way, but if he is not sure, glycol is a safer bet. Even then, there is no substitute for actually understanding the system and all of the possible dead legs. All of the strainers need to be opened and dried.

Bill Roosa · Nov 26, 2017

Blow out the lines with air, disconnect the city water, drain the water tanks, pump the toilet dry and add couple of oz of anti, fill the fuel tank, run the water pump on the dry tank to clear them, check the water level on the batteries. Will need to recharge them once or twice during the winter depending on age and if there are any parasitic (stereo?) loads, take the back off the raw water impeller and drain those lines, pull the drain on the muffler. You should have pumped out before leaving the marina if not then you have to determine how much is in the holding tank. Add anti to keep it from freezing. On a personal note I've never had a problem with not "winterizing" my holding tank as long as it is generally empty.
The above is not in the order you need to do it BTW.

Peggie Hall HeadMistress · Nov 26, 2017

dlochner said:
How does the water come out when he is not connected to city water? Is there water tank on board? There must be a pump onboard somewhere if there is a tank onboard.

City water line to the boat is under pressure, same as the water coming into a house from the water main. Some only keep the tank filled, others connect directly to the plumbing AFTER the water pump. So first you disconnect the shore water line and then winterize the fresh water system same way you'd do it if there were no city water connection.

thinwater said:
I hope he is aware that adding water to the bowl is not enough to winterize the head. It has to come in through the suction.

Winterizing the sanitation system:
First, pump out and THOROUGHLY rinse out the holding tank. You don't have to fill the tank to do this...put a few gallons of water into it via the deck pumpout fitting--'cuz that sends the water into the tank at the bottom to stir up any sludge and hold it suspension so it can be pumped out...pump that out. Repeat...repeat...repeat...until you're pumping out clean water.

If the toilet is one that uses onboard pressurized fresh water (which it prob'ly is on a SeaRay), winterizing the fresh water system winterizes the toilet...so you only need to winterize the tank. To do that, you can just flush the antifreeze down the toilet into it.

However, if it's a sea water toilet, just pouring antifreeze down the toilet won't provide any any protection for anything BUT tank. To winterize the whole system--intake line, pump and channel in the rim of the bowl--remove the flush water inlet hose from the thru-hull (close the seacock first!), stick it into a jug of non-toxic potable antifreeze and flush the toilet to pump it all through the system all the way into the tank. If your toilet inlet hose is teed into the head sink drain line, AFTER you've closed the sink drain seacock, you can just pour the antifreeze down the sink...and flush it through the system into the tank.

There's a "sticky" titled "Winterizing Plumbing" at the top of the Sanitation and Plumbing forum that's been there since I posted it in 2010.