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In this video I want to show you a couple of tricks for winterizing water systems much more easily
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than is usually done. I guess the heart of the system is this thing called the Closer II
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This is a pump, a pressure activated pump, that is designed to put plumbing antifreeze through all the pipes
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So instead of draining pipes, you fill them all with plumbing antifreeze, non-toxic plumbing antifreeze
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It works not just for pipes, but also for washing machines and fridges with water dispensers and dishwashers
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and all the things that are hard to drain in your cottage or seasonal home
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And I've done a previous video on this too, so you can see how it works, there's an animation, it's all very clear
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But there's another side to seasonal water systems that also need to be winterized, and that's the intake line
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So the big pipe that comes from the lake or river or spring that leads to your water pump
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that's normally filled with water of course during the season, and standard practice is to drain it completely
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And that means you've got to re-prime it again in the spring, which can be kind of a hassle
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So that's where this thing comes in. It's a fitting, it's called the TC3
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And I've got it hooked up to a kind of a mock-up of a water intake line
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So this is the pipe, it would of course be much longer than this in real life
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and here's a foot valve on the end to stop the water from going back down again
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But what the TC3 allows you to do is to easily fill the whole intake line with plumbing antifreeze
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So instead of draining the water and then having to re-establish that water in the spring
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you fill it with non-toxic plumbing antifreeze in the fall, it sits there
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protects the line, protects the pump, and then in the spring you just plug the pump back in again and you start
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You pump all of the plumbing antifreeze out of the system, it's not going to hurt anything
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you can just put it out on the ground and then you're good to go for another season
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So I'll show you how this works. It's not immediately clear but this pipe, this little tubing is crucial
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So I've cut this inner tubing shorter so that it works with the mock-up and so you get the idea of how it works
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So this device sits at the end of the intake line just before your water pump
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And almost all seasonal water systems use a jet pump. So imagine a jet pump connecting here
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This is the intake side and the tube is inside the intake line and it's all buttoned up and it never comes off
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I mean it's a permanent part of the system. Now there's two fittings on the top here
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This fitting connects to the antifreeze pump, the closer to antifreeze pump that I have here
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And this fitting has a valve on it and it connects to a short length of garden hose
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that's just long enough to get outside wherever you happen to be
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Because don't forget this is all happening inside wherever you have your pump stored. So this fitting here connects, the hose connects to this fitting temporarily when it's time to winterize
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And then you have another length of garden hose that goes from here outdoors
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You turn on the closer tube and it starts pumping antifreeze. Antifreeze that's stored here in this reservoir
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You just fill this up and it will pump it through and it will pump it in this fitting
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Now look where that fitting goes to. This fitting here connects to this tube and the tube goes all the way down to the foot valve
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So what you're doing when you when you hook this up is you're injecting plumbing antifreeze
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starting from the lowest part of the system. So it's going to push the water up and this line could be very long
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It could be 50, 100, 200 feet long. And as it's operating the water that's being pushed up comes out of this fitting here
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And you just keep it running for a while until you see that the clear water has been replaced by this pink plumbing antifreeze
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Now when that's the case you can you can shut this off
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You can unplug, de-energize the closer and your intake line is completely filled with plumbing antifreeze
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And in fact also because this is so close to your pump it's also going to fill the pump with
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plumbing antifreeze too. If you shut this off and while the while the clothes are still operating and then open up a
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fitting on the pump casing so that the water can be displaced from that too
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So it's a fast easy to use system. I've never seen anything as good as this and as effective
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It's Canadian made and it'll also save you a lot of trouble
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in the spring because as I said when you want to get the water going again you just flip the switch
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energize your water pump and away you go and everything works. There's no draining and you can be sure that everything's going to survive the winter just fine
