Can you shower in an RV in the winter? I’ve read that you can’t but some people in the RV park we live in said they did. So I asked them how they did it. This is what I learned and how we did it ourselves even though we had temperatures as low as 31 below Fahrenheit or -35 Celcius.
You can shower in an RV in the winter but there are a few things you should do first. You should make sure you have enough water and that the water source won’t freeze. You should also make sure that the grey water tank won’t freeze and that the tank can be dumped without freezing.
Read on if you want to learn how we did it.
Can you shower in an RV in the winter?
You can, but only if you first make sure:
- Your water hose won’t freeze.
- Your fresh and grey water tanks won’t freeze.
- Your sewer dump valves won’t freeze.
- Your sewer hoses won’t freeze and turn into poopsicles.
Make Sure Your RV Water Hose Won’t Freeze
If you are parked in an RV park where winter temperatures are below freezing, make sure that the park provides access to water that won’t freeze in winter.
Where we are parked, the park provides liquid water to our site, but we are responsible to get it from the winter spigot to our unit without freezing.
This usually ends up, requiring some kind of heated water hose.
Heated water hoses are available commercially but are not very reliable. Fellow RVers tell us they usually last for only one season. The one we bought, didn’t work at all even though it was rated for 40 below.
One of our RV park neighbours helped us build a do-it-yourself one. We took a regular RV freshwater supply hose and wrapped it in foam pipe insulation along with a heat trace cable. Once that was taped together, he wrapped it with two layers of foil-backed fibreglass insulation and taped it all together with silver tape.
He also wrapped the heat trace around the elbow bracket that feeds the water into our trailer. Once the heat trace was plugged in, it kept the water from freezing all through the winter in Alberta, Canada.
It cost about half as much as the commercially available heated water hose that didn’t work.
Make Sure Your RV Fresh and Grey Water Tanks Won’t Freeze
Now that you’ve got the water into the trailer without it freezing, you have to make sure it doesn’t freeze while it’s in the tanks. This includes the fresh water tank, if you’re using it, and the gray water tank that the shower drains into.
In our trailer, this was achieved, because, the trailer has a heated underbelly. The underbelly is closed off from the bottom and heat vents run from the furnace into it, as shown. This keeps the tanks from freezing.
If your RV doesn’t have this arrangement, it may have heating pads for the water tanks instead. These use electricity to keep the water tank warm. If your unit doesn’t have them, you may be able to purchase and install some.
Some of our RV park neighbours have neither of these options.
They keep their tanks from freezing by skirting their trailers. Heat comes through the floor to the underside of the RV and the skirting keeps the warmer air from blowing away. Some of our RV park neighbours use space heaters underneath to keep things warm enough.
However, you do it, it’s important to make sure your fresh and gray water tanks don’t freeze.
Make Sure Your RV Sewer Dump Valves Won’t Freeze
If you made sure your tanks freeze, you’ve probably taken care of the dump valves as well.
I only mentioned this because I know of one fellow RVer who had an issue with this. His trailer was a summer trailer so he didn’t have a heated underbelly or heated tanks. He didn’t skirt and heat under his unit enough and when he went to dump his tanks, the valves were frozen and he wasn’t able to do so until it warmed up.
This picture shows the opening in the skirting that I reach into to dump. The grey water valve is to the right and the black water valve is to the left.
The grey spiral is the heat tape that keeps everything liquid.
I leave the black water valve closed. I leave the grey water valve open so we can shower without having to dump too often.
When the black water tank gets full, about every 10 days, it’s time to dump. First I close the grey water valve to keep the black stuff from backing up into the grey water tank. After dumping the black water tank, I open the grey water valve again
Make Sure Your RV Sewer Hoses Won’t Freeze
There are several options to make sure your sewer hoses won’t freeze.
One is to disconnect the hoses and fully drain them each time you drain your tanks. Our trailer has two drain valves and about 25 feet of hose from them to the park sewer connection. Rick has multiple sclerosis and would have difficulty draining them each time.
One of our RV park neighbours has the sewer connection almost directly under his fifth wheel. For him, skirting underneath was enough to keep his sewer lines from freezing. They have a washer in their unit so he wanted to leave his gray water valve open.
Another RV park neighbour had a better solution. He ran his 3-inch diameter sewer pipe inside a 4-inch diameter plastic pipe along with a self-regulating heat trace.
The plastic pipe insured that the slope was very even so there were no places for water to build up, and freeze.
The heat trace made sure that any that was in that pipe stayed liquid.
Because the heat trace was self-regulating, he didn’t have to worry about it overlapping itself or getting too hot.
We followed his example. This means that we can leave our grey water valve open. Otherwise, we would have to drain the tank every day or two with two of us showering regularly.
This is how you can make sure your sewer hoses don’t freeze.
You Can Shower in an RV in the Winter
As we have seen, if you’ve made sure the water hose, the tanks, sewer dump valves, and your sewer hoses will not freeze, you can shower in an RV in winter.