Winterizing Well and Septic?

So I'm getting ready to buy some property in Montana for recreation/retirement/investment. Probably be a few years before I build, but I'll probably RV camp on it for a couple of months in the summers until then (depending on which parcel I buy, the covenants provide for such camping anywhere from 90 days to 9 months out of the year).

There is power to the lots, and rather than have to deal with dumping the holding tanks and refilling freshwater, I thought I'd go ahead and put in a well and septic to hook the RV to. The question I have, though, is what will I need to do to keep from having problems when the freeze comes? At that point the RV would be back in Arizona and the systems would be dormant, and not connected to any building. Have the septic pumped in the fall? Do something to prevent problems with the wellhead and/or pump???

Everyone lives in different climatic conditions, so you should contact your local well driller to determine how to winterize the well and a septic tank cleaner to give you an answer on what to do with the tank.

Under normal operation, both the septic tank and the well are installed to be frost free. That means piping is below frost line as well as the septic tank, so neither would normally freeze. In your case, the water line that you connect your RV to will freeze and maybe all the way down to four feet, so the water needs to be removed from the shallow piping. Your septic drain should be gravity flow, so all the water will be in the tank, well below frost line. Some people place bales of straw over the exposed covers to insulate them.

Yes - Pipes above and near ground level will freeze.
They need to be drained, possible compressed air cleared,
Water system anti-freeze added to sinks, commodes, etc.

My well is in a cistern about 6 ft deep and the lid is insulated and it has never froze when left not operating and alone during the winter. In fact I seldom rum the well in the winter unless I need some water for something in my shop so it sometimes goes weeks without running when I am at home. You could also build a well insulated well house and but some kind of electrical heater i it. The oil heaters that look like old time radiators are great and are not a fire hazard. If you use 2x6 construction and R19 insulation it wouldn't use much power and should be good for a while if the electricity went down for say a day. My brother runs his that way and has never had problem and he is gone for work months at a time in the winter. Probably be a good idea to shut the power to well off and drain the pressure tank up just in case. If you use a submersed pump its so deep it will never freeze. Thing to do about your RV is run an under ground line (pex is great) to your RV location and stick in a hydrant. Stay 6 ft down. Around her it usually won't freeze a line at 5 ft. But, some places you best go 6 ft. Then just run a hose from hydrant to RV and coil it up when you leave. Bury your power line in the same trench higher up..

A good septic system isn't a problem. I would run a bunch of water through it before leaving as any semi solids laying in it will freeze and then if you start up in the winter it may cause problems till it thaws back out because of the restriction cause by the frozen solid in bottom of the line. Might want to give it a shot of RidX when you begin using in the spring. The bottom of the tank should be well over 6" deep and not freeze plus the enzymes acting in it put of some heat. Drain field don't care. I have left my place for months in the winter came home and went to flushing no problem and it will get -30 around here occasionally.

The line from my new well is 7 feet deep and insulated with 4" blue board styrofoam. If I were to leave in the winter, there is a drain on the line between the well and the house. Supposedly, the water between will drain to this low point when you open it. Check back in January to see how it is going

We had a house we used to close down for the winter, we didnt do anything for the septic system, I used to drain the water heater and blow out all the plumbing then blow some of the antifreeze they use in RV's through the pipes, I also put some in all the traps and toilet, never had a problem.

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Thanks for the responses. Kind of what I figured. I only asked about the septic because a friend of mine has a rental place up there that had some problems the repair guy attributed to lack of use while the property was vacant. But I think that was more a case of solids not getting washed into the tank proper and mummifying into some kind of gooey plug, rather than a freezing problem.

What to do in the cold.

In Ohio they say the frost line is 36" or above. My farm's well line was deep enough, but during a prolonged 20 below freeze (almost 2 weeks) The line froze from a retaining wall 24" away. During the January thaw I dug it out and put the 1" water line inside a 3" pipe. With this I could pull it into the basement if it froze again, but never needed to.

Snow is a great insulator. At the old drafty farm house, I would shovel it up to the window sills, that was 5' on one side. Stopped most drafts and lowered firewood consumption by 35 to 50%. But if there isn't any snow, you loose heat like crazy! I started stacking straw bales 3 tall on the north and west sides, and replaced with fresh bales every 3 or 4 years and I would still mound up the snow on top of that if I had it. An example: My indoor wood rack was 42" by 42", on days with 35 above highs and low winds that could last for up to 3 days. But drop below zero and have high winds That wood rack needed filled twice a day sometimes more! If a winter had low snow fall I would go through 12 cords. A mild winter with lots of snow was 6 or 7 cords. My woodshed held 18 cords we started with it full! February is the wrong time to run out of wood with a wife and 4 kids! One long cold spring we were getting low on wood, so to save the wood for nighttime, my wife would fill paper grocery bags with the bark off the woodshed floor and burn those with a little firewood during the day. (that was the last year I started with only 12 cords!)

Now we live in a condo. The first winters gas bill was about $135, I had been paying $85 a cord delivered, so most winters were $800 or less. My brother lived just 2 miles away and has all electric heat. His winter electric bills run $800 a month! That's life outside of town!

Ivan

I once knew a guy that had worked all over the US and he told me about a guy he worked with from Montana. The guy said he was the youngest in his family and every morning in the winter his older brothers would lower him down in a 40 ft. well with a hatchet so he could chop loose enough ice for his dad to melt and make a pot of coffee. If that story is true you are going to have water problems. Larry

Its a great story. That is all it is. Nothing freezes 40ft down.

Most of the water lines here are 5 to 6 ft down. There were some freeze ups a couple winters ago when it got -20 and stayed there for about a week. But even then my well kept working even after the city water froze in the man hole where my meter is. They had no insulation on the cover. I put 12" of insulation on top the hole and dangled a heat lamp in it and shortly had water. Removed lamp and left insulation suspected on top of hole. Never happened again. I now have a way to cross connect my well to the house if city water ever goes down again. Well serves what was an old apartment attached to my much expanded shop. When I put in addition connecting house to new part of shop I installed a frost free spigot from shop wall to water supply under new bathroom in addition. If city water goes down I can run a hose from spigot to a well connection in shops well water supply to feed the house. Shop now has natural gas heat so hose won't freeze.

Under ground hyrants drain up beneath the ground when you shut them off so they don't freeze. I have 2 of them on my place. PEX pipe can be frozen and thawed with no problems unless you bend or beat on it while its full of frozen water. I put in a garden for the wife and just ran PEX pipe from inside the cistern to her garden. It runs exposed through a hedge then is buried 6 inches from hedge to garden fence. When winter comes I will just open the tap at garden and let it back drain as best it can in well cistern. In cistern it is connected to a PVC pipe that comes from 6 ft down up to a sigot at top of cistern. I istalled a ball valve in PVC line and just above the valve a T with another valve. When it starts top freeze in fall I don't even go down in cistern. Have a long rod with a hook that I stich in a hole I drilled in ball valve handles. Shut off supply to PVC spigot line, the open valve on T and it lets that line drain. I am sure the PEX line to the garden will have spots full of water, but as said freezing it won't hurt it. Butt, I could take my air tank over to spigot and blow back though the line and get most of it out. Then, next spring. Reach down in cistern with rod, turn off T and turn on supply. The rest of the well water lines water to my shop and my hydrants stays on all year long

Until I got remarried a couple years back and wife moved in I used to go away for work for months at a time in the winter with no problems.

tops said:

I once knew a guy that had worked all over the US and he told me about a guy he worked with from Montana. The guy said he was the youngest in his family and every morning in the winter his older brothers would lower him down in a 40 ft. well with a hatchet so he could chop loose enough ice for his dad to melt and make a pot of coffee. If that story is true you are going to have water problems. Larry

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That sounds like they had a well in the front yard with a bucket on a rope.

bearman49709 said:

That sounds like they had a well in the front yard with a bucket on a rope.

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If the kid's name was Timmy I sure hope they had a dog named Lassie. Just in case.

yaktamer said:

If the kid's name was Timmy I sure hope they had a dog named Lassie. Just in case.

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And hopefully he didn't have a sister named Jessica.

My dad grew up in northwestern Montana about 70 years ago and his dad was a residential plumbing contractor. They buried all the lines 12 feet deep and never had anything freeze.
As a side note, since all digging was with hand shovels and pics, my dad was really good at digging foxholes during the Korean war.

The folks have a winterized cabin in northern Wisconsin on well water and septic with a leach field. They have not had freezing issues. The well pump is in the basement and the septic tank and leach lines must be deep enough that they don't freeze.

Thanks again to everybody who has responded. Doesn't sound like I'll have much of an issue. Now I just have to decide whether to buy the place I want or the one I can afford.

Where I'm now living was once my summer camp. It was a summer camp for about 30 years before I bought it and our camp for about 15 years. The well tank was in a crawl space under the camp.

Cold weather shut down (late September) consisted of draining the well tank, emptying the "hot' water tank, draining down the fixtures and lines. Toilet tank was drained out, the toilet bowl was emptied. Never had a bad smell from the septic tank

.The water line from the well to the camp was at about a foot down. A good draining took care of all problems. The pump was about a 150' down in the ground! (now that its our year around house the water line is 5' deep)

The big one that most people forget was the sprayer hose on the kitchen sink. All was always good when we turned on the water again in mid May.

If you leave a building unheated in the winter another thing is to dump some rv antifreeze in the sinks, showers, tubs and toilet so the P traps in the drains don't freeze up and break.

When I mentioned the oil heaters that look like radiators I was talking about electric heaters that the element heats thermal oil and radiates the heat. You can lay paper on them without it catching fire.

Like this. I have a couple of them. Run them in the green house to help out early spring
https://www.acehardware.com/departm...VVyCtBh3aJggoEAQYAyABEgJwcvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

steelslaver said:

Run them in the green house to help out early spring

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That's a great idea!