For those of you that live in climates that tend to be REAL COLD in the winter; I have a safety related tip.

When you are insulating your boom pipes; please do it with a material that does not absorb any water. Neoprene is a good product for this application.

When I worked in the mountains of Colorado I always had to insulate the boom pipe. To remember my initial attempts at this is, in retrospect, funny. I used a sort of fiberglass-looking material that, when washed or snowed on, ended up weighing more than the boom. What a big mistake! This ended up being redone and wrapped in duct tape. It did work a little better, but still looked like s**t.

The end all answer turned out to be a black (to absorb the heat of the sun) neoprene product that if taken care of would last several seasons.

So it is one of those: Please do as I say not as I did... deals. Todays modern lightweight booms do not need to be over loaded to be properly insulated. ;~)

Other than protecting the pipe from the wind, what other precautions should be done for the winter, should you drain the water tank or just the wash hose, etc? Thanks