Is your van ready for winter?
Hello,
Last year we had a problem with the flush pump in our Thetford C250 CWE toilet which, during the cold winter weather, the freeze and thaw cycles fractured the outer casing causing it to leak. Although it didn't cause too much damage, it meant that the flush on the toilet was out of action until we could repair it and we did have a bit of pink flushing water leaking inside the van around the base of the toilet, until we realised there was a problem. (Thetford now provide a modification free of charge Thetford Article, which we have fitted so hopefully we wont get a recurrence of such a problem in the future)
This scenario got us thinking....If such a small amount of water could cause a pump to fail, what would happen if the fresh water system in the van had any residual water left in it during icy/cold weather. So this year, after some research, we decided to invest in a Floe.
This device is advertised as removing all excess water from your van's fresh water drainage system, removing all stagnant water which may be hanging around.
Our Floe (purchased via the above website) arrived last week, and we have tested it on our van this morning. It’s safe to say we were very impressed, in fact it's FANTASTIC. Although we believed we had drained down as much water as we could after our last trip, including draining the filter housing. Today using the Floe we have removed over 1 litre of water.
The pump on the toilet failed due to only about 20ml of water becoming frozen, imagine the level of damage over 1 litre of frozen water could do to the pipework in your van!
The Floe isn't that cheap (£40'ish) but we would prefer to pay that than the repair bills associated with damage and damp caused by any potentially hidden leaks.
Can we just add we are in no way associated with Floe or the company that makes them. We were just so impressed with the performance of the Floe earlier today that we felt others may like to know before packing up their vans for the winter.
HM