January 18, 2022
One of my readers commented on my blog post, Woke to Frozen Cold Water Line, suggesting that having a heated RV hose might have helped.
As one of our RV accessories, we have a heated RV hose. Dakota Ridge RV Park requires heated water hoses for their winter campers who are connected to water. They also are fine with an RVer filling up their fresh water tank and disconnecting their hose. The park heats the pipes to the spigot and they want water connected RVers to heat from the spigot to their RV connection.
When the temperature is expected to drop to 42 degrees F, we plug the heated RV hose into the rear outlet, via an extension cord. I have no idea why the RV does not have have an outlet on the utilities side. It would be so handy to have an outlet on the utilities side to plug in the heated hose.
We have limited trusted in the weather forecast, so if they claim the low will be 42 degrees F, we know it can drop to freezing, so we plug in the hose to keep the incoming water from freezing.
We don’t leave the heated hose plugged in all the time, as we are paying for our electricity separately from the monthly rate. The monthly rates for off season are good for the area, but for monthly customers, the RV park meters our electricity and charges us for our usage.
We have seen two water fountains in the RV park after a bitterly cold night. In one case, the RVer didn’t have a heated hose and the water was spraying from a split in his hose. As the water hit the ground, it turned into ice. In the second case, the RVer did have a heated hose, but didn’t put the foam insulation over the park’s spigot when they connected the hose. The water was spraying from the connection to the spigot. Ice and water was everywhere.
I felt really bad for the second RVer, as they tried to do the right thing, but missed an important step. They needed to use the foam insulation to cover the spigot. The RV hose instructions didn’t cover how to use the foam insulation covers. I know this because I read the instructions for our hose. We figured out we needed to pull the foam insulation over our spigot by seeing what other, more experienced RVers had done while we walked Nox around the park.
After seeing the second water fountain, I was really glad we changed our hose connection to have one of foam insulation covers over the spigot!
Retirement RV Dream 
There is such a steep learning curve to RVing…it also shows us how much we take for granted the “little” conveniences in life like running water and heat.
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Yes, it is and camping in winter is different than summer!
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Don’t forget your black hose heater!!!!
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Is that a real thing?
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Nah…it’s an old RV joke.
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I haven’t heard that one yet!
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We have seen some people wrap their sewer hose with insulation. When it dropped to 3 degrees F, we saw one couple did have a frozen sewer hose. He was out there trying to thaw it with a hair dryer!
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I think most folk do not leave their tank valves open during really frigid weather. Rather, they accumulate in the black and grey tanks and then open when needed so there’s a big “flush” that clears all the way to the ground. I suppose if you leave the valve open stuff could freeze up before it hits the drain. Well, now, that was a pleasant and tasty conversation to have over coffee and cinnamon buns!
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đŸ˜‚
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This is great information, something I will keep in the back of my head. But I hope I don’t have and opportunity to use it to often. Like a Canadian goose, I will fly south for the winter.
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After this January, we don’t plan to camp in the cold either! But we may still find ourselves in cold weather. One year we went tent camping in Yellowstone on the 4th of July and it froze overnight!
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