Cold snap January 2024 - Fort Collins, CO - keeping things from freezing

The heated hose froze this morning at a temperature of about -9F. We left the kitchen faucet drip all night, but turned it off for a while this morning. No flow in the heated hose caused it to freeze. The Camco documents say safe to -20F, so I thought maybe the heater in the hose failed. The light in the plug is working, so I put my AmWatt on it to see if it was drawing current, sure enough it is. Maybe -9F is just too cold?

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I was expecting to see 10 watts/foot of hose. This is a 15' hose and is drawing 6.2 watts/foot.
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The solution is simple, drip, drip, drip.
 
Might be worth carrying something like an old furniture blanket to lay on the hose if you're going to insist on camping when it is that cold @Wayne. :)

We're due for 14* here in another few days. I'm waiting to see if my Hybrid water heater packs it in and chooses to run the elements. At least it is smart enough to know when it is futile and switches over.
 
-22°F here last night. Kitchen faucet dripping rapidly and we made it through the night without the heated hose freezing, kind of. About 7:00 this morning a chunk of ice must have broken free and plugged the hose, it froze solid in about 5 minutes. I've never seen anything quite like that. The hose was still drawing 93 watts when it froze. I think Camco's -20°F rating is a bit aggressive, probably 0°F without water dripping is a more realistic number.

It's supposed to get to 29°F today and the extreme cold is over for now. Nothing like this on the 10 day forecast. Good riddance.
 
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