Winterizing the Black Flush?

[HeppDJ2]

Hi All-

Hope everyone had a great season and I'm sad that I'm writing about winterizing :-(

I have a new unit this year (2009 Rockwood Ultralite 2701ss). It came equipped with a black flush for cleaning the black tank. (awesome feature, used it 3 times this year and I couldn't believe what it got out!)

Anyhow, I'm wondering if there is anything special that needs to be done to winterize the black flush? It has an inlet that looks just like the city water inlet from the outside, but I did open the screen and noticed there was not a back flow preventer, so it almost looked more like a fill valve. Since it's flat against the trailer, it's tough to pour anything in it, I didn't have a funnel with small & long enough tip to try and see if you can pour anything down there.

But I'm wondering, does this need to be winterized in some fashion? Or I'm wondering if the water just drops right into the black tank and therefore there is not water left in the hose that would need to be winterized?

Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated! Everything else is done at this point!

Thanks,
Mike

[cfsoistman]

I just take the screen washer out of mine for a day so any water just drips out. There's no check valve so the water just runs back out. Any remaining water won't be a problem since there's not much of it. You can blow the line out with air as well. No more than 40 PSI so you don't damage anything.

[HeppDJ2]

Thanks for the tip. I thought about putting some air in there. Does it just blow into the black tank? Does the Black dump valve need to be open? I already filled the tank with a gallon of pink stuff. Can I blow into the valve without opening the dump?

Thanks again for the quick reply!
Mike

[dimurrrw]

The black tank is vented.

[coffeerol]

This is what I think about the black water tank. I have a 8296SS TT that I purchased in July of 2008. There is an antisyphon valve on my unit. I think that they must put one on all the unites as a safety precaution. You certainly don't want black water to be syphoned into the public water system. I know that it is there because mine was leaking and I had to go in to stop the leak. My belief is that you have to do nothing to winterize this line. The water should flow out in both directions from the antisyphon valve. If you let all the water flow out of the tank, then all you have to do is put a little antifreeze down the toilet. Even if there is a little water in the tank if it should freeze it should cause no damage.