Winterizing for one to two bucks!!

Hey guys. I posted about moving to Colorado about a year ago and 6 months ago I actually did it!! It's GREAT HERE! Beautiful mountains, love the snow, and a few other green perks, if you know what I mean ;). Work is starting to come in but we're still having below freezing temps at night so I thought I would share my experience because I know this is a question that's asked ALL the time.

So. I didn't realize ice EXPANDS! I should have known better but I thought if my TM froze and it defrosted everything would be OK. I woke up and all of my K Valves had busted and even the valve on my RX-20. The long stainless tube on the back of my wand busted too (for the water). I got a repair kit for the RX for about $12 so no harm no foul. K Valves for $20 each and I actually replaced the stainless tube with 8th inch hose and it's working GREAT! Luckily nothing on my machine froze so I'm good there.

So for the past couple of weeks I've been putting non-freezing windshield wiper fluid in my machine every single night. I don't have a garage, much less a heated garage or a way to put a heater in since it's community parking. So here is what I do:

The fluid is about $4 per gallon. At first I was using a whole gallon but I found that half a gallon is even too much so you COULD get away with a quarter gallon but eh, better to be safe than sorry. At the end of the day I pull the fuse on my TM which shuts off the machine if there is no incoming water. (it's a chemtex so it's the 2nd blue fuse), so now the machine can run without water. Be careful as this will cause the machine to overheat if you do it too long!!

I empty out the water in the water box by either running it through the wand or using the vacuum hose to extract it. Once the machine is empty of water I'll pour the washer fluid into it with ALL of my high pressure hose connected. Then I take each wand, the RX, stair tool, upholstery tool, everything and run the washer fluid through the first wand until washer fluid starts to come out. Then I switch and do all of my tools. At this point there is plenty of fluid running THROUGH the machine and through all of my high pressure hoses too.

I take my garden hose in the house with me every night (it's on a portable reel). I didn't do this one night and the next day it was frozen solid!! But I got the bright idea of putting it in the dryer before going to the customers house and well, it WORKED, believe it or not! I also put my high pressure hose in the dryer too and it defrosted it, which was really cool but now that I'm running washer fluid through everything I haven't had a single problem. If only there was a way to winterize the garden hose too, then I wouldn't have to drag anything into the house.

I also cover my machine at night with U HAUL blankets. I use about 5 double or triple folded and pay the most attention to the areas where the heat exchangers are but I cover the engine too.

So far so good, even at 17 degrees (f). So I hope this helps some of the new guys and maybe offers an alternative to anyone using $15/gallon anti-freeze.

Always REMEMBER to run all of the wiper fluid out the next day before you start to clean. But if you don't, it's no big deal really. I hooked up my RX in the customers home without doing this and squeezed the trigger before I turned on the machine. All of the fluid seeped out all over the carpet but it didn't stain or cause any type of damage what do ever. But still, before you run your machine the next day, run it for about 5-10 minutes before you start. I usually run all of my hoses before firing up the machine so I take my hydroforce without the jar and put the sprayer into the vacuum tube for about 5 minutes and it seems to get all of the fluid out of the machine and sucks it back into the recovery tank.


BTW. I found some hiking boots at Wal-Mart for $25 that are water proof. I don't know why I didn't think of water proof boots before but these things work great, they don't wear as quickly as tennis shoes, they are comfortable and they don't bleed onto the carpet. They may be a regional thing but if you come across a pair I DEFINITELY recommend them, even all year round, especially when you inevitably get your feet wet when hooking up your garden hose on the side of a house.