Winterizing Water System with One Gallon of Antifreeze

[jkleins]

Is the check valve needed? Mine doesn't have one. What am I risking?

It certainly makes life easier to not have one. I can just remove a pipe connection at the low point of the system and the entire tank and all the pipes siphon out. What am I missing by not having one though?

Jim

[lancelot9898]

Originally Posted by mbianka

Lancelot:

I never had to deal with draining a hot water tank myself. But, I'm thinking you might try hooking up a small wet dry vac (I find a 2 gallon Sears vac to be very useful on board) to the output hose of your water heater and have it suck the water out of the tank. You probably should disconnect the input side of the tank when you do this so there is no chance that you collapse/damage the tank with the vacum. Then after draining the tank as much as possible if you place the tanks inlet hose into a jug of anti freeze and use the wetdry vac on the output you should be able to see that you are sucking the anti freeze through the tank. You might find you need a lot less antifreeze using this method. Just don't forget to hook the hoses back up when your done or you will be reminded in the spring by the sound of running water into the bilge. Anyway that's my thoughts on how to do it.

Capt. Mike
THE BIANKA LOG BLOG

I think that the wet dry vac is the simpliest method rather than redoing the plumbing or trying to defeat that check valve. I have adapters for hooking up hoses directly to the faucets so I can attach the wet vac to the hot water faucet and then open up the cold faucet at the other sink to prevent any collaspe of the tubing. Don't think the old wet vac can pull that much vacumn, but you never know. Thanks for the suggestion! I've already winterized the system for this year and wonder about the table showing dilution vs freeze points. The "pure" -50 degree pink stuff is already diluted coming straight from the bottle so not sure how that dilution table presented on this forum is to be applied?

Also someone asked about the check valve purpose...it is to provide protection from having the tank going dry which will burn out the heating elements(I think).

[Vasco]

I wonder if a wet vac can suck water out of a hot water tank. The hot out is at the top of the tank. Once you suck a bit of water out won't you be sucking air? And if nothing is going into the tank won't you just have a vacuum? A friend used to use a compressed air tank and blow everything out. I tried it one year but was not very successful as I couldn't get a good seal between the air line and the water line.

[lancelot9898]

Originally Posted by thinwater

PERCENT VOLUME GLYCOL CONCENTRATION REQUIRED

Freeze ProtectionBurst Protection
Temperature°F Freeze Burst
20 17% 11%
10 26% 18%
0 34% 23%
-10 41% 28%
-20 45% 30%
-30 49% 33%
-40 51% 35%
-50 53% 35%
-60 55% 35%

Dowfrost is PG with additives.

Just to make things more confusing....
* There is no ASTM standard for "burst point." Every company makes up their own testing spec. However, most good companies respect the above values. But not all, judging from MDSD information.
* Burst point changes with freeze/thaw cycles. The water ice floats up, leaving the glycol at the bottom (like making apple jack). We have burst the top of pipes due to this effect, during a long cold stretch.

Looking at this table some more I assume that the -50 degree stuff straight from the bottle is 53% by volume glycol. So...if I dilute it some more when adding the stuff to my tank my freeze point will increase. Adding one gallon of pink stuff to one gallon of water should result in 26.5 % glycol giving a freeze point of 10 degrees. Or is my algebra off ?

[lancelot9898]

Originally Posted by Vasco

I wonder if a wet vac can suck water out of a hot water tank. The hot out is at the top of the tank. Once you suck a bit of water out won't you be sucking air? And if nothing is going into the tank won't you just have a vacuum? A friend used to use a compressed air tank and blow everything out. I tried it one year but was not very successful as I couldn't get a good seal between the air line and the water line.

I did not use a compressed air tank this year, but merely a hand pump which did not have enough pressure to force the water beyond the hot water exit of the tank(located not at the top, but near the top). Thus the max removed was only about 1 gallon. I'm assuming that the wet vac will do essentially the same thing that the compressed air can do only applying it from the other end.

[mbianka]

Lancelot9898:

On second thought I don't think the wet/dry vac would work on the hot water tank. But, you could try it. If you look on page two of the link GordMay has provided: ➥ http://www.raritaneng.com/pdf_files/...eaterv0502.pdf
It looks like the best way to drain the tank is too remove the cold water inlet hose either at the tank or somewhere forward of your check valve and open a hot water tap so the water can drain out of the cold water inlet hose. Even better is to install a drain valve somewhere convenient for you in the cold water inlet hose for draining in the future (also shown in the diagram on page two). According to the manufactuers directions you should only need a quart for the water tank once it is drained. Might be something to think about for next year.

Capt. Mike
THE BIANKA LOG BLOG

[SteveHoiland]

Propylene glycol is also recomended for use in Spectra watermakers for winterizing and it does double duty by pickeling the unit for up to one year where as the sc-1 pickeling compound will only last 6 months. Don't see why it wouldn't work in any make of water maker.