Winterizing or Fall nighttime protection, keep it going!

So, where I am in Canada, we can work during the day in the fall and early spring, but we have to keep our stuff from freezing overnight. I used to use a heater and a blanket, but that was risky, and a major fire hazard, not to mention expensive.

A buddy of mine inspired me to do nightly winterization at the small cost of a jug of windsheild wash, small price to pay to be up and running the next day:

and:

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You may want to consider RV antifreeze instead as it prevents metal corrosion.

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This isn’t for seasonal winterizing, only to keep things from freezing overnight

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Beats spending waaaay too much to store them all inside…

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100 % antifreeze, I use green, cut it 50/50 , windshield washer fluid only works to a point so buy the good stuff and look for the freezing point. I’m good to -50.
And don’t care anymore because I finally have a heated shop :grin: . It’s a pita day in and day out , did it for years, does work well though.
And do you have a belt drive or gearbox machine ?

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Heat cable wrapped around pump, injector, pressure hose out of injector. I back my truck up in my driveway each night already so I just plug it in when I get home in the evenings and unplug it in the mornings. The plug end of the heat cable illuminates bright orange so I hang that end off my ladder at about head high so that it is blatantly obvious to me that it’s plugged in. I use small wire to keep the cable attached to my system all winter and then just take it off once spring rolls around. The cable comes in various lengths, but I believe mine is about 6-ft of heated length. The built in thermostat kicks it on and off as necessary throughout the night. We just got down to 37 degrees last night here in the middle of South Carolina so it’s not quite time for me to set it up for the year.

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I’m about halfway through building an insulated box for all the sensitive parts of my rig. Ran out of time last night and just threw a tarp over to finish the job. Small space heater on lowest 600 watt setting, with thermostat turned almost all the way down.

I also circulate hot water through my wfp hose and supply hose, to act as a radiant heat source. The wfp hose reel is furthest from the space heater and most susceptible to freezing with this setup.

I’ve heard of some wfp pump controllers that have a built in frost protection feature. They’ll kick on periodically throughout the night to circulate warm water through the system. That wouldn’t work for me, since the box is going to cover over the propane water heater… :fire::pickup_truck: :fire:

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14 posts were split to a new topic: Christmas lights discussion (split off from winterizing thread)

I have a 120v pump. It’s got a hose with a pressure hose quick connect on the end that hooks up to my setup and pumps windshield washer fluid through each night. I will probably switch to RV antifreeze as recommended earlier in the thread.

Takes about 5 minutes to winterize properly with RV Fluid. Then your pump and hoses are safe up to -50F. I thought this was common knowledge…

Last season I used rv antifreeze, let buffers drain, disconnect supply hose, suck antifreeze in until it comes out of the end of the high pressure hose, repeat with second machine, replace supply hose, then the next day upon pulling to the customer house I’ll just crank up the machines and let the antifreeze back into the jug to reuse it, worked pretty well for me although Georgia winters are really mild

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