Woke to Frozen Cold Water Line

Posted on by Julia

January 6, 2022

This morning, the outside temperature had dropped to 3 degrees F, with another load of snow. When we got up this morning, the RV temperature was what we expected, it was in the low 60’s F.

Bruce got up and went to the bathroom and he discovered the bathroom didn’t have any cold water. Luckily, we had put a gallon of water next to the toilet to use to flush the toilet when traveling. The bathroom did have hot water. He checked the kitchen sink, same thing, no cold water, but it did have hot water. He checked the dishwasher and it had hot water.

Bruce bundled up, went outside, and checked the basements. They were warm. He then posted in the Riverstone RV Group on Facebook to see if anyone had ideas of how we could get the cold water running.

The consensus was we have an ice block, which wasn’t a surprise. If the block is in the line, we should be okay as PEX tubing holds up well to the expansion. The concern is if the ice block is in a fitting. The fitting could break. This would mean we wouldn’t have any cold water and we would have a water leak.

One of the suggestions was to heat the area under the bathroom sink, as there is a hole leading to the basement plumbing under the sink. Bruce is trying that right now to see if it works.

Wish us luck, as we try to get the cold water running! Fingers crossed we don’t have any broken fittings!

Meanwhile, Nox is keeping warm by sleeping on top of the red blanket hanging over the couch to rest on top of the furnace venting system.

31 thoughts on “Woke to Frozen Cold Water Line”

  4. Keep us posted – frozen water in an RV is a pain if you are planning to use it, not drain it. (I’ve never tried to keep the water flowing during winters; too much to deal with. But then, I don’t usually spend more than a month or so at a time on the road – you live in it full time.)

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    1. The water was fine the last cold snap into single digits. So we expected it to be fine now. We were actually more worried about our water heater freezing.

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  7. You could try the Deep Alabama method which suggests you just add a quart of anti-freeze t your water supply. Of course you can’t drink the water, or bathe in it, or use it for washing or basically anything…but it won’t freeze. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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      1. Our basement bathroom water line froze during that cold snap, so I’m not surprised you had a problem with your RV! I’m so glad you got it restored.

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      3. Nope, it thawed out eventually. When we camp, though, we run a trickle of cold water through our kitchen sink during the nights when it goes too far below freezing. We had it freeze up once, and that was enough!

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    1. Hi Frances – Our RV heated hose did help, as it kept the water coming into the RV unfrozen. The plumbing spits inside the RV one pipe to go to the water heater and the other is the cold water line. The RV heated hose allowed water to come into the RV and the pipe to the water heater didn’t freeze, so we did have hot water, which was huge! The cold water line continues to the front of the RV and it developed a freeze in the belly of the RV between the connection and the front of the RV. Several of our RV neighbors also had this problem as well. If we were going to camp in the bitter cold regularly, we would get RV skirting. Since we plan to chase 70 degrees, we don’t plan to purchase skirting. It would take up a lot of room in our storage.

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  12. Pingback: Heated RV Hose – Retirement RV Dream

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Published by Julia