Frozen Water Pipes

[Roper]

With these cold temps, I'm wondering if anyone has frozen water pipes - as I do.

My rubber water pipe enters the house about 3 to 4 ft down. It runs about 15 ft through an unused concrete cistern under my garage floor. I have put a heater in that room and hope that will thaw the pipe soon.
Today I may resort to hair dryer, heat gun, blow torch etc. etc.
I'm also thinking of heat tracer type tape or some other similar product.
Any experience with a product like that?

Thanks All

[oaknut]

Depends entirely on where your pipe is frozen. If it's an underground freeze the heaters won't do much. If you can pop the pipe apart and find a way to keep from flooding the basement you can attach a garden hose to the hot water heater and feed it up the frozen line to that the jam. Just be sure to shut the water heater off before letting the water out.

[yellow dog]

Roper my old farm house I use to live in Kemptville had almost the same scenario you have. I had a small ceramic heater beside the rubber water line entering the house. It had a temperature sensor on the heater and would kick on at roughly -10 basement temperature. The basement was your typical stone foundation with a dirt floor. The water was being used constantly with my family of five but if it were just my wife and i the temperature sensor would have to be adjusted to say -2 basement temp or even -5 to prevent from freezing. The more you use the water the better because it keeps the water flow moving and not freezing up. Keep it simple.

[oaknut]

Good point yellow dog. One of the camps I used to winter in we would leave a tap running a bit all night when cold to prevent freeze up.

[yellow dog]

Good point yellow dog. One of the camps I used to winter in we would leave a tap running a bit all night when cold to prevent freeze up.

Sometimes i would also do that when the temp was extreme to play it safe. Nothing worse when you have to be somewhere and you cant take a shower because the water line is frozen .

[JoePa]

Speaking of frozen pipes -hows this one - my sister has an old house - has an upstairs bathroom where the toilet, the pipes and the drain are on an outside wall - so all of a sudden the toilet won't flush - the water won't go down - the plumber says that the drain pipe is frozen shut - using a rotary rotor he clears the drain pipe - you ask how can a drain pipe freeze shut - well what was happening there was a slow leak inside the tank that held the water and this small leak ran down the very cold drain pipe and eventually froze the pipe solid - kinda like a waterfalls freezing up - that's one for the books -

[Species8472]

You can rent an oil fired hot water pressure washer supplied via tank. Open up the pipe where it enters the building and you can feed the pressure washer line down the pipe. If it has the correct head it will self advance jetting 180F water as it does. If there are fittings on the buried pipe it may not work as they can cause the head to hang up. If you are on a well make sure pump is shut off at the breaker or disconnect switch. If on town water you will need to locate the shutoff at your property line and have it turned or otherwise you are gonna get really wet once the ice lets go.

Heat trace varies considerably in quality. You can get cheap stuff at Home Depot, Cdn Tire etc. Better quality stuff can be found at plumbing wholesalers like Wolseley, Desco, Near North etc. If it is an external type you will need to insulate the pipe as well. There are internal types as well that insert inside the pipe via a Philmac type compression tee. Cost will vary depending on the watts/metres and the length of heater.

If this rarely ever happens I would go the cheap route. If this is a common thing every winter spend the money on something better.

[Mattones]

I am shocked mine hasn't frozen yet.. My crawl space is very poorly insulated and very cold. This spring I have to clean it out and spray foam it.

[Roper]

After trying a few basic things, I called a local plumber that I have used a few times.
He came over with 2 fire extinguishers filled with hot water under pressure and hosed down the rubber pipe with it.
Worked really well. At first just a trickle started through, but thats all you need I guess to get things moving.
$65 cash and away we go.

PS He said if you ever see any of the old fire extinguishers in garage sales - buy them - they can come in very handy.

Thanks for all the help.

[Pat32rf]

It's not just the old houses that have this problem. We just had a pipe freeze and burst in one of our new commercial buildings here in town, flooding the nice hardwood floor in the basement...