Storing my RV for a month. Drain the water and leave RV cold, or heat it?

Dear Dave,
I live in Utah, and we will be going on a few more trips this year, including Arizona for Thanksgiving. I won’t use my motorhome again after that until Christmas, when we’ll use it as a guest house. Should I blow out the lines and drain the tanks and leave it cold for the month of December, then warm it up again for the guests? Or try to keep it warm? When I do keep it warm, is it better to use the propane heater or an electric heater and shore power? —Clayton, 1993 National RV Sea Breeze 31

Dear Clayton,
I would drain all the water and let it sit cold during December. Then you don’t have to worry about the electricity shutting off, propane running out, or any other issues with appliances when storing the RV when it’s not being used.

Disadvantages to keeping stored RV warm

If you do try to keep it warm, the 80 lb. propane tank in your rig will not last much more than a week in below-freezing temperatures. So you will have to find a way to refill it or run an auxiliary heater which will draw high amps and most likely will not heat all the areas where you have water.

Your Sea Breeze is not a full basement, from what I remember, so there might be a heat duct in the service compartment. However, there are several lines running through the bottom section that would not be getting heat.

One question I have is, when you are using it for a guest house, will you have them using the water system such as the shower, toilet, and sinks? Since I live in cold country, we have used RVs in below-freezing temperatures quite often. I add RV antifreeze to the gray and black water tank, blow out all the air in the system, and then just have several gallons of water available to flush the toilet or run down a sink. Granted, you can’t really shower this way, but you can use other systems without the fear of freezing.

Another option would be to run RV antifreeze through the water system and leave it cold until needed. With this, you would then need to heat the rig and flush out the pink stuff when needed.

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Dave Solberg is a leading expert in the RV industry and the author of the “RV Handbook.”

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