what good is "rv" or pool antifreeze?

[guy48065]

Several years ago I had a pool with a bottom drain and part of the winterizing routine included pouring pool antifreeze in the drain hose til you see the color come out the drain...meaning it's full. I did a test where I filled 3 small glasses with water, antifreeze and 50/50 and put them all in the freezer. They all froze and in about the same time. The freezer was at 0F. What's more the 50/50 didn't even separate.

Anybody know if this stuff does anything useful?

[onthelaketwo]

My truck seems to appreciate the anitfreeze each winter.

I know somebody who used water during summer and forgot to replace with antifreeze. Real bad.

I use the RV antifreeze every winter to show down cottages. I put in toliets, and all drains. Works great. I do use it full strength.

[tuned]

RV antifreeze rated for your area coldness is fine for winterizing only. DO NOT try to run it in a closed cooling system.
You should add a corrosion inhibiter to it tho. I use outdoor wood boiler liquid chemical additive because it is cheap.
The RV glycol is kind of weird stuff. At fourty below it gets sort of stiff and slushy but never really freezes and expands like water does. I used it for years in my I/Os and am about to again this fall on the new boat. Never an issue as long as you are carefull to get the right rated stuff.

[GregF]

RV antifreeze is a lot less toxic than car antifreeze.
That is the main reason they say to use it in places where you will dump it back in the water table.
They use propylene glycol in tooth paste. The same amount of ethylene glycol would make you sick and shut down your kidneys after a while.

[badmoonrising]

RV antifreeze rated for your area coldness is fine for winterizing only. ...... I used it for years in my I/Os and am about to again this fall on the new boat. Never an issue as long as you are carefull to get the right rated stuff.

Yep. West Marine sells several different grades, I've never had an issue (20 plus years winterizing I/Os).

[guy48065]

I always assumed (you know what they say...) RV and pool antifreeze were the same thing. Labels say propylene glycol in both. I looked up MSDS sheets for both and did find one difference--pool antifreeze is only 13%PG, RV is 40%PG. Both are totally soluable in water so when you pour a gallon in a pool drain hose that is open to water at the drain I don't think that 1 gal of 13%PG is going to have much affect on 40,000 gallons of water that is available to dilute it BTW the specific gravity is 1.01 and that doesn't sound heavy enough to keep it separated from the rest of the pool water.

As for the RV antifreeze we use in our cottages, RV & boat fresh water systems...I need to repeat my simple test using that & see if it also freezes solid at 0°F like the pool version did.