Heated winter storage

[La Gitana]

I have a 2019 International Signature that I haven’t stored for winter before. I’m in Minnesota, so plenty cold. I am storing it in an indoor, heated and well insulated storage unit. Each unit in the facility has its own heavy duty heater so even if for some reason my heater went out for a period, the ambient heat from the units on either side of me would keep the temp above freezing. I also check the unit every few days to make sure the temp is where I set it (around 60 degrees). Am I crazy not to bother to winterize it? Does this sound safe enough?

[Daquenzer]

Originally Posted by La Gitana

I have a 2019 International Signature that I haven’t stored for winter before. I’m in Minnesota, so plenty cold. I am storing it in an indoor, heated and well insulated storage unit. Each unit in the facility has its own heavy duty heater so even if for some reason my heater went out for a period, the ambient heat from the units on either side of me would keep the temp above freezing. I also check the unit every few days to make sure the temp is where I set it (around 60 degrees). Am I crazy not to bother to winterize it? Does this sound safe enough?

It is clearly safe while you have it stored. However if you choose to travel with it somewhere in the winter you would need to winterize it or it will freeze up while you travel (unless you have temps above 32 degrees). Most people traveling north to south in the winter leave their trailers winterized until they get far enough south they can travel with the heat off. Then they de-winterize.

IMHO you are paying an awful lot for heated storage for not spending an hour to winterize your Airstream. Once you learn how to do it the task is really quite simple.

I can see heated storage for Class A's, B's, & C's because when you travel everything is heated up. If you like to take winter trips it makes it easier not to have to winterize and de-winterize all winter.

[La Gitana]

[QUOTE=Daquenzer;2304315]It is clearly safe while you have it stored. However if you choose to travel with it somewhere in the winter you would need to winterize it or it will freeze up while you travel (unless you have temps above 32 degrees). Most people traveling north to south in the winter leave their trailers winterized until they get far enough south they can travel with the heat off. Then they de-winterize.

IMHO you are paying an awful lot for heated storage for not spending an hour to winterize your Airstream. Once you learn how to do it the task is really quite simple.

I can see heated storage for Class A's, B's, & C's because when you travel everything is heated up. If you like to take winter trips it makes it easier not to have to winterize and de-winterize all winter.[/QUOTE

Thank you so much for input. I store lots of other stuff there and like to hang out there during winter.

[La Gitana]

Thank you so much for input. I store lots of other stuff there and like to hang out there during winter.

[Arcticfox]

We store our trailer in a heated space in our back yard. Coming from central Canada I can relate to your cold comment. I normally just blow my lines, put a little antifreeze down the traps and make sure my tanks are empty.
We travel south after Christmas and don't want to take a chance of things freezing while in transit. Because we only blow the lines, its very easy to fire up the water system as soon as we're out of cold enough to stop things from freezing. We travel during the day with the furnace set to 55-60 and this keeps the trailer cabin and interior pipes nice and warm. Also it becomes a very short warmup period to get things to 70 when we stop for the night and crawl into bed.
We have done things this way for several years and have never had any issues.....

In your case it would be very easy to just blow your lines (45 PSI) and call it a day. If your heat goes out. No big issue. If you decide to travel with the trailer, also no big issue. Either way your covered.

Good Luck and stay warm......
Cheers
Doug

[La Gitana]

Thank you, Doug. In the situation you described, do you do anything with the water heater?

[Arcticfox]

Originally Posted by La Gitana

Thank you, Doug. In the situation you described, do you do anything with the water heater?

Yes I drain it only because we're travelling in the middle of winter for about 3-4 days before we're out of the cold. I guess one could leave it working on Propane. but its just easier to drain.

[Rocinante]

Given the geographic location, I would definitely winterize the trailer as a cheap form of insurance against something going drastically wrong. Would your trailer remain above freezing if power went out to the entire facility for a week in the midst of a horrendous record-setting blizzard? Perhaps not.

Oh, and when you're not hanging out there, I would definitely set the thermostat lower - no more than 50 degrees. It would probably save you money and would certainly consume less power / oil / gas keeping that empty trailer warm.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

The thing to worry about would be a "common mode" failure of the heating systems. They run on some sort of fuel, maybe that runs out. They have control systems, possibly power goes out to them. If they all go out, everything cools down. It will take it a while to get to freezing. The trailer inside the building will take even longer to get there. People would have to be very asleep at the switch to not notice there was a problem in time to "save" the situation. A blizzard or something like that might make a fix more difficult.

Even though failure is pretty unlikely, a quick blow out of the lines / dump of the tanks isn't very hard to do. I suspect that I'd still go at least that far down the winterization route, even with the very low likelihood of there being a problem.

Bob