Grey and black tank heater question

[Ron Surkin]

2024 Minnie Winnie 31K. Parked in MD 45 minutes NW of DC. Will be there about a month. Plugged into household electricity via an adapter. Need to know if I can run the grey/black tank heater with that power setup without draining the house battery, since overnight temps will go a little below freezing soon. Plan on running the furnace at night to keep the rv warmer overall even though we are not in it. (BTW am getting a 30 amp outlet installed, but not done yet.) Also any other cold weather preventative suggestions welcome. Thx.

 

[Eagle5]

Greetings Ron,
A 20 amp adapter into your Minnie Winnie has plenty of power to run your black and gray tank heaters, as well as your furnace. You should be OK running the microwave at the same time too. The big draw on your motorhome that requires the 30 amp service is the air conditioner.
With regard to being at one place for one month, remember that the holding tanks are not septic tanks. I would not suggest that you go over one week without draining them, and of course using your Black Tank Flush at that time. I recommend that you also use Borax as a holding tank chemical; about ½ cup in the black, and a ½ cup in the gray. It is economical and works well.
Since you are not staying in the motorhome, you could also just winterize it as I do for the freezing weather. With empty holding tanks, you do not need to run the tank heaters:
Winterizing a 22M using the blow-out method
Rather than running your furnace, I just use a pancake heater to keep the humidity level down.
Davis Instruments Air-Dryr 1000 Dryer

Welcome to the forum.
Eagle5

 

[Morich]

I do not trust electricity to be safe when I am not there to check it.
If you do not want to winterize, I DO suggest at least protecting the holding tanks. Power is very prone to quitting for a number of reasons, as simple as storms or as easy as a car hitting a pole, breakers tripping or rats chewing a cord! People step on cords or forget to plug them back in after using the outlet. They are a failure waiting to happen!

And the biggest hit you can have is a broken holding tank, so I do not EVER want to let that happen when there is a very good way to assure the tanks don't freeze.

Two dollars worth of assurance and it will not freeze in the tanks nor the traps!
You may lose some pipes if the worth case happens but they are reasonably easy to repair for less than a few hundred dollars. I consider frozen tanks fatal!

https://www.google.com/search?q=RV+...c2MjBqMGoxNagCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[creativepart]

I do not trust electricity to be safe when I am not there to check it.

Totally agree. I've suffered from misplaced trust in a power connection in a temporary storage situation only to find the power had gone out 2-weeks before I got a chance to check on my travel trailer (this was long before moving on to a motorhome).

Parked where I can check it every few days... OK. Parked on it's own for extended time... NO WAY.

 

[creativepart]

You should be OK running the microwave at the same time too. The big draw on your motorhome that requires the 30 amp service is the air conditioner.

Woah... careful there. The microwave uses almost as much amperage as your A/C. 30-amp only goes so far and tank heaters and furnace fans demand a LOT of power on their own.

 

[Eagle5]

I run my microwave on a 15 amp service all the time; no problems.
1,500 watts ÷ 120 VAC = 12½ amps
The two tank heaters draw 2 amps of AC power.
The furnace draws ½ amp of AC power.

 

[creativepart]

I run my microwave on a 15 amp service all the time; no problems.
1,500 watts ÷ 120 VAC = 12½ amps
The two tank heaters draw 2 amps of AC power.
The furnace draws ½ amp of AC power.

The tank heaters and furnace fan run off of battery power. When they do the Converter can easily take 10+ amps attempting to charge your batteries.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying that it's easy to top 15-amps when you add in the microwave.

 

[Ron Surkin]

Thank you all for input and suggestions. The rv is parked just a few hundred yards from where I will be staying so I can and will monitor both it and the weather daily.

 

[paof6]

Fwiw the drain valve elbows on our 25 B freeze in the mid 20's. Tanks stilled liquid but couldn't drain.
Yes the elbow heaters are working just don't appear to be large enough IMHO.