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Anyhow, bottom line is, save your money, use the bypass, and don't fill your water heater with antifreeze. Problem solved...

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Could never figure why someone would go thru the expense of adding 5 gallons antifreeze to a HW tank that is so easy to drain in the first place.  If you have a compressor that is the quick and easy way to go.  As stated before, it takes me less than two minutes to go through all the lines 2x on a 177 and then only 16 oz. rv antifreeze is used for the traps and toilet.  Last gallon of rv antifreeze cost $ 1.49 and will last 8 years.

So I looked up what it's purpose was in antifreeze.  I found a lot of discussion about it's use in auto coolant  but not much  about RV antifreeze. It's commonly used in auto antifreeze as a source of phophates which coat the internal metal engine parts to inhibit corrosion. Its also a buffering agent reducing acidity which would also reduce metal corrosion. I found one  RV antifreeze product that said it's purpose was to "prevent rust and corrosion", so probably it's safe to assume that its there for the same reason as for car engines. 

But apparently if you mix auto antifreeze using it with  hard water the phophates will combine with the magnesium or calcium that's making the water hard and produce deposits which can clog the engine passages. So most European car manufacturers ban it's use in auto antifreeze because there is a history of problems with hard water there.

 All that leads me to think that while maybe it normally does inhibit corrosion in your plumbing system but it's reacting with the magnesium anode if you fill your water heater with it. 

Anyhow, bottom line is, save your money, use the bypass, and don't fill your water heater with antifreeze. Problem solved....

Water, Ethyl Alcohol, Propylene Glycol, Dye, and Dipotassium Phosphate. I'm not sure how reactive the other ingredients may be.

I do agree with the guidance not to judge trailer age by anode rod condition. The point of the magnesium or zinc in the rod is to  be highly reactive so it gets sacrificed before the steel in the tank. So the anode material can disappear really quickly under the right conditions. 

Yes, outside your R-Pod on the white sticker next to the yellow tire loading and spec. chart there should be an actual date of manufacture on the upper right side.  The print is quite small, either a number 4 or 6 size, small enough that I need glasses to read it.  On mine it reads: Date of Manufacture  01/08/2011.

Originally posted by StephenH Don't judge on the appearance of the anode rod. There are water conditions that can cause rapid deterioration of the anode rod so that a new one will look old very quickly. Very high pH water is one of them.

I find that quite interesting as our 177 has seen for most of its 12 years our well water which remains in the tank from late April through late October every year.  Our anode still looks nearly new and the pH of our water is 7.8.

The RV title will tell you whether the vehicle has been previously titled.

Is there a way, besides relying upon the paperwork that came with the R-Pod, to get information:

1) Actual date of manufacture

2) If the R-Pod was used prior to sale as new

3) A "carfax" type of report for travel trailers

There are just too many things that have cropped up including a hot water anode rod that looks years old with supposedly only 15 days of use, to not consider that this "new" R-Pod wasn't quite new.