There’s a phone call I dread getting every November, and it goes something like this: “Bill, I was camping in the mountains last weekend and now my grey tank won’t drain. I think everything’s frozen solid.” The next twenty minutes are spent walking them through damage assessment—because a frozen holding tank isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a potential plumbing disaster. Ice expands. Plastic tanks, waste valves, and the fittings that connect them were not designed to contain expanding ice. When those components crack, you’re looking at a repair bill that makes the cost of prevention look like pocket change.
Cold weather RVing has exploded in popularity over the past decade. Ski trips, fall foliage tours, early-season national park visits before the summer crowds arrive—more RV owners than ever are using their rigs in temperatures that their plumbing systems weren’t designed to handle without some help. The good news is that protecting your tanks and plumbing from freezing doesn’t require a complete winterization if you’re planning to use your RV’s water systems. The right combination of tank heaters, pipe heaters, and cold weather accessories keeps everything flowing even when the temperature drops well below freezing overnight.
This roundup covers the best cold weather protection products we carry at the RV Upgrade Store, from tank heaters and pipe heaters to bypass kits and blow-out plugs that make winterization fast and foolproof when you’re done with the season.
Best for: Fast, efficient water line clearing for winterization or cold weather preparation
The blow-out plug is the unsung hero of RV winterization. This small, inexpensive brass fitting connects to your RV’s city water inlet and allows you to use compressed air from a standard compressor to push water out of your plumbing lines. No crawling under the rig to drain low-point drains. No running faucets for twenty minutes hoping gravity does its job. Connect the plug, hook up your air compressor, and systematically blow water out of every line in your RV by opening faucets one at a time.
I’ve been recommending this method for years because it’s faster, more thorough, and more reliable than gravity draining alone. Water gets trapped in low spots, elbows, and loops in your plumbing that gravity simply can’t reach. Compressed air pushes water out of those hidden pockets where it would otherwise sit and freeze, expanding and cracking fittings from the inside out. The Camco quick-connect design makes this process even easier by providing a solid, leak-free connection to the water inlet that you can attach and remove in seconds.
Even if you’re not doing a full winterization, the blow-out plug is invaluable for cold weather camping. If you’re expecting a hard freeze overnight but planning to use your water system the next day, a quick blow-out of the lines before bed prevents the worst of the freeze damage risk. It takes five minutes and gives you peace of mind that a sudden temperature drop won’t leave you with cracked plumbing in the morning.
The quick-connect feature means you’re not fumbling with thread-on connections every time you need to clear your lines. If you do any amount of cold weather RVing, this plug should live permanently in your utility bay toolkit. It’s one of those products that costs almost nothing, weighs almost nothing, and prevents hundreds or thousands of dollars in potential damage.
I always keep a spare in the store’s display case because customers who’ve experienced one frozen line never forget to buy one. The trick is getting it before you need it, not after.
Pro Tip: Set your air compressor regulator to 30–40 PSI maximum when blowing out RV water lines. Higher pressure can damage check valves, water pump diaphragms, and fittings that aren’t designed for pneumatic pressure. Low and steady does the job—you’re pushing water, not pressure-testing the plumbing.
Buy the Camco Blow-Out Plug
Best for: Pumping non-toxic RV antifreeze through your plumbing system for full winterization
After you’ve blown out the water lines with compressed air, the next step in a thorough winterization is running RV antifreeze through the plumbing to protect any residual water that the air didn’t reach. And there’s always residual water—in trap bends under sinks, in the toilet bowl, in the water heater drain area, and in the low points of flexible hoses that sag between supports. The Valterra hand pump kit makes this process simple and self-contained.
The kit includes a hand pump that draws antifreeze directly from the jug and pushes it into your RV’s water system through the city water inlet. You pump antifreeze into the system while opening each faucet (hot and cold) one at a time until you see pink fluid flowing out. Then you flush the toilet until pink appears, pour some into each drain to protect the P-traps, and your interior plumbing is protected from freezing down to whatever temperature rating your antifreeze provides.
What I like about the hand pump approach is its simplicity and portability. You don’t need your RV’s onboard water pump to be working. You don’t need a compressor or any power source. You don’t need to replumb anything or install a bypass valve (although bypass valves are a good idea for other reasons, which I’ll cover below). Just connect the pump to the inlet, dip the intake tube into a jug of antifreeze, and start pumping. It’s a manual process, but it’s reliable and it works every time.
For RV owners who winterize their own rig rather than paying a dealer $150–$200 for the service, this kit pays for itself immediately. A couple of jugs of RV antifreeze, this pump kit, and the blow-out plug above are everything you need for a professional-quality winterization at a fraction of the cost. And once you’ve done it once, you’ll wonder why you ever paid someone else to do it.
One important note: always use RV-specific antifreeze, which is non-toxic and safe for potable water systems. Never use automotive antifreeze in your RV—it’s highly toxic and will contaminate your water system permanently. RV antifreeze is typically pink or blue and is clearly labeled as non-toxic and safe for freshwater plumbing.
Pro Tip: After winterizing with antifreeze, pour at least half a cup down each drain—kitchen sink, bathroom sink, shower—and into the toilet bowl. These drain traps hold water that can freeze and crack the trap fittings. Antifreeze in the traps also helps prevent sewer gases from entering the RV during storage.
Buy the Valterra Antifreeze Hand Pump Kit
Best for: Saving antifreeze by bypassing the water heater during winterization
Here’s a winterization tip that saves you money every single year: bypass your water heater before running antifreeze through the system. A standard RV water heater holds 6 gallons. If you don’t bypass it, those 6 gallons of expensive RV antifreeze go straight into the water heater tank, where they sit doing nothing useful all winter. You’ll use two or three extra jugs of antifreeze for absolutely no benefit.
The Valterra permanent mount bypass kit installs on the hot and cold water lines running to your water heater. Once installed, you turn two valves, and the water flow is rerouted around the water heater entirely. Antifreeze goes directly from the cold water lines to the hot water lines without filling the tank. When spring arrives, you turn the valves back, reconnect the water heater to the system, and you’re back in business.
Installation is a one-time job that takes about an hour with basic plumbing skills. The kit includes everything you need—valves, fittings, and detailed instructions. Once it’s installed, you use it every time you winterize for the life of the RV. At two to three jugs of antifreeze saved per winterization at roughly $5–$8 per jug, the kit pays for itself within a season or two. After that, it’s pure savings year after year.
This specific kit is sized for 6-gallon water heaters, which is the most common size in travel trailers and Class C motorhomes. Check your water heater’s capacity before ordering—larger Class A motorhomes sometimes have 10-gallon tanks that require different plumbing configurations.
Beyond the cost savings, bypassing the water heater also speeds up your winterization process significantly. You’re not waiting for 6 gallons of antifreeze to fill a tank. You’re not worrying about whether the antifreeze concentration in the tank is adequate. And you’re not flushing 6 gallons of antifreeze out of the tank in the spring. It simplifies the entire process.
Pro Tip: After installing a bypass kit, label the valves clearly with “Normal” and “Bypass” positions. It’s easy to forget which way the valves should point, especially if you only winterize once a year. A simple label prevents the embarrassing mistake of running your water heater in bypass mode during camping season.
Buy the Valterra Water Heater Bypass Kit
Best for: Premium bypass installation with brass valves for long-term durability
The Camco Supreme bypass kit serves the same purpose as the Valterra above—routing antifreeze around your water heater during winterization—but does it with brass valves and fittings that represent a meaningful upgrade in build quality and longevity.
Brass valves are inherently more durable than plastic. They handle temperature extremes better, resist cracking from repeated thermal cycling, and provide smoother valve action year after year. The threads are more precise, which means better seals and fewer potential leak points. For a component that you’ll install once and use for the life of your RV, the brass construction is worth the price premium.
I recommend the Camco Supreme kit to full-timers and serious cold-weather campers who will be using their bypass system frequently. If you winterize once a year and store the rig in a heated garage, the Valterra plastic-valve kit works perfectly fine. But if you’re the kind of RV owner who camps through early November, winterizes for a month or two, then de-winterizes in February for a ski trip, the repeated valve cycles make brass a smart investment.
The installation process is essentially identical to the Valterra kit. Access the water lines behind your water heater, install the bypass plumbing, and you’re done. If you’re upgrading from an existing plastic bypass kit that has developed leaks or stiff valves, the Camco brass kit is the natural replacement. The connection points are standard sizes that fit existing plumbing without modification.
The difference between a $20 bypass kit and a $35 bypass kit is negligible in the context of protecting a $15,000–$150,000 RV from freeze damage. This is one of those products where buying the better version costs you almost nothing extra and eliminates the possibility of a valve failure at the worst possible time.
Pro Tip: When de-winterizing in the spring, open the bypass valves back to the normal position before reconnecting your water heater to ensure proper water flow. Then run fresh water through all your lines until the pink antifreeze is completely flushed out—you’ll taste it in your coffee if you don’t flush thoroughly enough.
Buy the Camco Supreme Bypass Kit
Best for: Preventing exposed water lines and pipes from freezing during cold weather camping
Tank heaters and winterization protect your holding tanks and interior plumbing, but there’s a critical vulnerability that many RV owners overlook: the exposed water lines that run underneath and along the exterior of your rig. The city water connection, the water heater supply lines, and any plumbing that passes through unheated compartments are all susceptible to freezing, and they’re often the first things to fail in a cold snap.
The Madison Accessories RV pipe heater is an electric heating element designed to wrap around or run alongside exposed water pipes, keeping them above freezing temperature even when ambient conditions drop well below 32 degrees. The heater draws power from your RV’s 120-volt system (shore power or generator) and provides consistent, thermostatically controlled heat to the pipe surface.
Installation involves routing the heating element along the vulnerable pipe sections and securing it with cable ties or heat-resistant tape. Many RV owners install pipe heaters along the entire run of exposed plumbing from the city water inlet to the point where the pipes enter the heated interior of the RV. In particularly cold climates, adding pipe insulation over the heating element dramatically improves efficiency by keeping the heat where it belongs—on the pipe, not radiating into the frigid air.
I see the most demand for pipe heaters from RV owners who camp in the shoulder seasons—early spring and late fall—when daytime temperatures are pleasant but overnight lows can drop into the twenties. Full winterization isn’t practical because they want to use their water system during the day. But leaving exposed pipes unprotected overnight is gambling with their plumbing. The pipe heater bridges that gap, keeping everything flowing through the cold nights without requiring a full winterization cycle.
For full-time winter campers in northern climates, pipe heaters are essentially mandatory. Combined with tank heaters (for the holding tanks) and enclosed, heated underbellies (on rigs that have them), pipe heaters complete the cold weather protection system that lets you use your RV’s full plumbing capabilities in freezing temperatures. Without them, you’re one forgotten faucet drip away from a burst pipe.
Pro Tip: If your pipe heater is thermostatically controlled, test the thermostat at the beginning of each cold season by placing the sensor in a bowl of ice water and verifying that the heater activates. A failed thermostat means the heater won’t turn on when the temperature drops, leaving your pipes unprotected at the worst possible time. Replace the thermostat if it doesn’t respond to the cold test.
Buy the Madison Accessories Pipe Heater
There’s an important distinction between winterizing an RV for storage and preparing it for active cold weather camping. Winterization is for when you’re putting the rig away—draining the water system, blowing out lines, and filling with antifreeze to protect everything while the RV sits unused in freezing temperatures. The blow-out plug, antifreeze pump, and bypass kits in this roundup are winterization tools.
Active cold weather camping is different. You want your water system fully operational—faucets running, shower hot, toilet flushing—in temperatures that would normally cause freeze damage. That’s where pipe heaters, tank heaters, and heated hose systems come in. These products keep your plumbing above freezing while you use it normally, eliminating the need for winterization during your trip.
Many RV owners use a combination of both approaches depending on the season and their travel plans. Pipe heaters for active cold weather camping in October and November, full winterization with antifreeze for December through February storage, and de-winterization in March for the new season. The products in this roundup support both approaches, giving you flexibility regardless of how you use your RV in the colder months.
Freeze damage is one of the most expensive and most preventable problems in the RV world. A cracked holding tank, a burst water line, or a damaged water heater can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to repair—and the damage often isn’t discovered until spring, when weeks of water intrusion have compounded the initial freeze damage into a much larger problem.
Every product in this roundup exists to prevent that scenario. Whether you’re winterizing for storage or heating pipes for active cold weather camping, the investment is minimal compared to the potential repair costs. A blow-out plug, a bypass kit, and a jug of antifreeze for winterization costs under $50 total. A pipe heater for cold weather camping runs roughly the same. Compare that to a $400 water heater replacement or a $1,200 holding tank repair and the math is obvious.
Don’t wait until the first hard freeze catches you off guard. Stock your cold weather accessories now, install your bypass kit while the weather’s warm and you can work comfortably, and you’ll be ready for whatever the winter brings. Your plumbing will thank you.
I’m Bill Rowell, the founder of RVupgrades.com. In 2002, I launched the business to help fellow RV enthusiasts find unique and hard-to-find products. Over the years, it’s grown to offer more than 15,000 items, with a warehouse in Eastlake, Ohio. Having owned and repaired nearly every type of RV, I bring over two decades of hands-on experience to the table. For me, this isn’t just a business—it’s a passion and a way of life that I love sharing with the RV community.
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