# Summerizing - What do you do with the antifreeze?



## flight51

Hi all. I'm new here so please have mercy. I had a question about summerizing my camper. I need to remove the antifreeze, but what do you do with it?? Can you just keep it and reuse it next year?? What do you put in?

Thanks,
Ev


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## heruide

Ev, 

I use so little anitfreeze that I just dispose of it and buy another gallon or two the next year. 

Now if you blow out your lines with air before adding the antifreeze you should not have a problem reusing it and I would store it in the orginal bottle or make sure the bottle is properly labelled. 

The catch would be if that even after draining the lines you may still have water in the low spots. Year after year the antifreeze would be diluted which might be or not be a problem depending on how cold it gets during your winter. I've seen some antifreeze testers in autoparts stores but I've not tested them to know if they work with RV antifreeze.

Hope this helps.

Ruide


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## heidigrrrl

I have the same question, as we just bought our first travel trailer. With our pop-up we never used anti-freeze--just drained everything and left the plugs off. The dealer had our new travel trailer winterized when we bought it (in January) and we need to de-winterize it.

What do you mean by "disposed of" your antifreeze? How do you dispose of it?


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## antigua

The anti freeze that I bought for my trailer is non-toxic and environment friendly. Biodegradable. In fact I think they all are. Run all your water lines until the water turns clear to your holding tank and drain it like you always would after camping. Outside showers same thing, run it until it turns clear


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## heruide

Heidigrrrl,

I'm sorry I did not notice your question. By disposing of it properly, I pour down a drain that goes to a waste water treatment plant. 

Yes the Propylene glycol that is in RV antifreeze is biodegradable. And if you spill a small amount on the ground or concrete all you have to do is dilute it with a large volume of water. 

For the volumes you would collect during de-winterizing, I don't want to pour that on the ground or put it in a storm water drain where it will not be treated.

Here are the instructions from one Material Safety Data sheet. 

Diluted aqueous waste may biodegrade, but avoid overloading plant biomass and assure effluent complies with applicable regulations.

Hope this helps.

Ruide


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## lucha94

I'm in the same boat with just buying our first trailer. It was dewinterized by the previous owner. He said something about them putting in an attachment of some sort. Do I have to remove the "attachment" before I drain it?? Any help would be breatly appreciated. Thanks


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## heruide

lucha94 said:


> I'm in the same boat with just buying our first trailer. It was dewinterized by the previous owner. He said something about them putting in an attachment of some sort. Do I have to remove the "attachment" before I drain it?? Any help would be breatly appreciated. Thanks


There are two attachments he may be talking about. There is the hot water bypass line which some RVs comes with while other folks have it installed. If it has a value all you have to do is turn the valve so that the water goes into the water heater. The other attachement is a three way valve and tube that allows you to extract antifreeze from the bottle using the water pump. Again all you would have to do is make sure the valve is turned so that water is extracted from the water tank.

Check and see if you have either of these.

Hope this helps.

Ruide


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