Not sure I can smelt all that down and glean any useful information from it but thanks anyway.
I'm just going to drain the system as soon as I drink my coffee and take my last flushable shit and shower for the Christmas Holidays.
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Do you or do you not leave outside faucets dripping when it's freezing?
- Thread starter TexPatriot
- Start date
Not sure I can smelt all that down and glean any useful information from it but thanks anyway.
I'm just going to drain the system as soon as I drink my coffee and take my last flushable shit and shower for the Christmas Holidays.
I've always enjoyed the annual 'Record cold and blizzards shuts down the North' videos showing cold weather experts up north trying to push their front wheel drive cars through the snow and falling on their faces. They could put music to it.
For all the 'People down south don't know how to build a house' commentors is laughable when they never learned what All Wheel Drive and 4x4's are for.
Don’t forget …..Beer and/or Jack Daniel’s or some local Shine .Get the bread and milk first before you do anything.
Us in the South aren’t used to dealing with this shit. Cold front is in North West Arkansas as I type. Wind chill is 11*f there …..47*f here , only 100 miles from me. I’m baby sitting 21 Chickens and one Mean Rhode Island Red Rooster ….13 cats ( hate cats) and 2 horses while my best friend & wife are in Goa India. They left , leaving me totally unprepared for this.
Run your dishwasher and clothes washer with staggered delays so one is running all night.
The time to design, plan, install, test cold weather plumbing is Summertime. What I am hearing in this thread is mainly wasteful, self-induced, largely ineffective emergency procedures brought on by the mistaken belief that there will never be another Winter.
I shut power to the well off, opened the two outside faucets includind the furthest one downhill on the back of the cabin. They blew until the pressure tank emptied. The furthest downhill one was still dripping one drip every five seconds about 30 minutes ago. The indoor faucets are all open but nothing coming out, dead, nada.
When the front hits in a couple hours I'll close the two outdoor faucets and cover them and turn off the shut off valve at the tank. I'll leave the indoor faucets open because why not.
For those arguing that moving water will/won't freeze I will add that movement is not the only factor in play here. The water is moving from a non- freezing environment to a freezing one. The water moving through the line normally comes from underground or inside the house and carries it's heat with it, helping to prevent freezing in the line. If the line is not insulated it will still rapidly lose that heat and freeze unless there's considerable flow, which in itself causes a multitude of problems. As far as movement alone goes, those icicles hanging around were formed by moving water.
All this is just my opinion based on my unscientific observations.
All this is just my opinion based on my unscientific observations.
Never gave it much thought, are frost free spigots only used above a certain parts of the country? I can see people in Texas for example never thinking they'd need them and not using them.
As for insulating outside exposed pipes... it's not like your coat, it's like a cooler. If it doesn't have any warmth to keep in, it's not going to help. Learned that the hard way with the pipe from the cistern to the cabin decades ago. Insulation alone, frozen and split. Heat tape alone, frozen. Insulation over heat tape, happy down to -20 or more. (at which point the pump inside freezes up since there's no insulation on the floor or in the walls lol)
As for insulating outside exposed pipes... it's not like your coat, it's like a cooler. If it doesn't have any warmth to keep in, it's not going to help. Learned that the hard way with the pipe from the cistern to the cabin decades ago. Insulation alone, frozen and split. Heat tape alone, frozen. Insulation over heat tape, happy down to -20 or more. (at which point the pump inside freezes up since there's no insulation on the floor or in the walls lol)
I'll be honest, I just learned some Yankee ingenuity in this thread. I thought a spigot and hose bib were just other names for faucet and any freeze protection was the sock you wrapped around it before you stuck a Whataburger styrofoam cup over it, which works, btw.
That’s is a proven preventative measure to keep your utility meters from freezing.
Makes you wonder why we can't turn around without running into one of you yankee som-bitches moving down here telling us how bad it is "back home". go home if you think we's so stoopid. oh, and bless our heart.
I've never met one that doesn't have the correct way of doing things like they do back in their shithole state.Makes you wonder why we can't turn around without running into one of you yankee som-bitches moving down here telling us how bad it is "back home". go home if you think we's so stoopid. oh, and bless our heart.
Californians are just as bad, as they they flee a seaboard they made uninhabitable.
Tell the Yankees to come pick up their weather. It’s in our yard again.
Those need to be installed with grade towards the outside. The other cause for failure is that hoses get left connected, which don't allow the water to drain out.
The grade was correct
I can only think the previous owner of my house left a hose connected. House is 16 years old, the faucet was original
I bought the house in June, caught the leak in September, no chance of a freeze in that time period in central VA
but that makes perfect sense. The previous owner of my house was a moron and did a lot of stupid things
@TexPatriot
So did your pipes survive?
I drained a couple of unoccupied buildings and blew out the lines with the air compressor. Worked just fine.
So did your pipes survive?
I drained a couple of unoccupied buildings and blew out the lines with the air compressor. Worked just fine.
This is old hat to those in cold climates - 12 degrees and sustained cold weather is not normal in middle Georgia where I live. My house was fine but MANY busted lines in houses around middle GA - so bad that the water storage systems drained and a "boil water" message went out for a few days. Lots of plumbing work for a couple of weeks. I am 62 years old and this was a one in a lifetime cold event in middle GA - no, the houses are not built for this, they are built for 100 degree summers.
Yes, thank you. No broken pipes this this time.
I drained the cabin line and turned the well pump off. I'll be doing that whenever it gets in the teens in Austin which means low teens and single digits out here to the west.
Next time I do need to blow air through to get the water out of a low spot.
Why not just RV pink antifreeze in the lines.
Just did mine in upstate NY, going to get down to zero and they never freeze.
Two facts
Moving water can freeze
Water, warmer than 33F has one hell of a time freezing.
Reason water running from faucets not freezing, because the source being drawn from is well above freezing. If at any point it is subject to continuous freezing weather, allowing the temperature of the water to fall below .33 degrees its gonna freeze.
All that said, our little farm house in Downsville was built on piers, had no protection under the sills allowing plenty of 32 degree and colder air to circulate among the pipes. If we did not keep water running it would freeze.
Our lake cottage is also a pier home but it‘s main foundation is a solid wall, based in a concrete footing. So, the temperature under the home, not being exposed to weather remains well above freezing.
Still, with memories of freezing pipes from the farm (and the barn, it was awful, I promise you, a total mess made in hell, a frozen hell to be sure but H E L L !!! ) i keep the indoor faucets dripping when the weather drops into the low 20’s or colder. The outdoor faucets are protected and never had a problem.
(During Christmas 1983, we had a major freeze. Our pond froze hard enough to play ice hockey on, in North Louisiana mind you. The barn water froze solid despite efforts to protect it and thaw it out. I managed to turn the spigot on and not realizing the peril of my ways, I failed to turn it back off. Since it was frozen solid, hard to notice. Well guess what? We had a major overnight thaw and rainstorm. Then, an immediate re-freeze. The water poured out, flooded stalls filled with bedding and some manure and horse urine and all that froze into as nasty, flooded, slushy mess than one can ever imagine. Had to put a really nice show horse out in the pasture so I could put a stud in her stall as his stall was one that was a flooded / frozen / nasty / shitty slush.
Never forget the look on her face as she stared at me, frost on her back, as I shoved that frozen slushy mess out of the barn…for days. All the while that worthless little stud enjoyed the comfort of her dry, warm stall). He was an orphan and true to form, orphans and twins never amount to anything. (Quoting Walter Matthau as Lloyd Bourdelle in “Casey’s Shadow”). its true, never purchase a horse that was raised as an orphan or one or both horses who are twins.
Moving water can freeze
Water, warmer than 33F has one hell of a time freezing.
Reason water running from faucets not freezing, because the source being drawn from is well above freezing. If at any point it is subject to continuous freezing weather, allowing the temperature of the water to fall below .33 degrees its gonna freeze.
All that said, our little farm house in Downsville was built on piers, had no protection under the sills allowing plenty of 32 degree and colder air to circulate among the pipes. If we did not keep water running it would freeze.
Our lake cottage is also a pier home but it‘s main foundation is a solid wall, based in a concrete footing. So, the temperature under the home, not being exposed to weather remains well above freezing.
Still, with memories of freezing pipes from the farm (and the barn, it was awful, I promise you, a total mess made in hell, a frozen hell to be sure but H E L L !!! ) i keep the indoor faucets dripping when the weather drops into the low 20’s or colder. The outdoor faucets are protected and never had a problem.
(During Christmas 1983, we had a major freeze. Our pond froze hard enough to play ice hockey on, in North Louisiana mind you. The barn water froze solid despite efforts to protect it and thaw it out. I managed to turn the spigot on and not realizing the peril of my ways, I failed to turn it back off. Since it was frozen solid, hard to notice. Well guess what? We had a major overnight thaw and rainstorm. Then, an immediate re-freeze. The water poured out, flooded stalls filled with bedding and some manure and horse urine and all that froze into as nasty, flooded, slushy mess than one can ever imagine. Had to put a really nice show horse out in the pasture so I could put a stud in her stall as his stall was one that was a flooded / frozen / nasty / shitty slush.
Never forget the look on her face as she stared at me, frost on her back, as I shoved that frozen slushy mess out of the barn…for days. All the while that worthless little stud enjoyed the comfort of her dry, warm stall). He was an orphan and true to form, orphans and twins never amount to anything. (Quoting Walter Matthau as Lloyd Bourdelle in “Casey’s Shadow”). its true, never purchase a horse that was raised as an orphan or one or both horses who are twins.
I would have thrown a blanket on the stallion and turned him out into the pasture. Nothing worse than a wet, muddy horse stall and the sucking sound of a horse trying to slog around in it.
Would have been my first choice if it was a safe choice. Best case, he would have busted through a fence and tried to breed someone else’s mare (gotten me sued for sure considering some of the horse owning neighbors) worst case, he would have busted the fence and hurt or killed someone trying to get to another mare. A stud simply cannot be trusted. We eventually gelded him but as I said, he never turned out to be much. His grandsire was a world champion and like his grand sire, he had a nasty temperament.
I've never left outside faucets running in cold weather, or covered them up. Even the regular old gate valves that shut off outside the wall have never been a problem, and it gets fairly cold here in the winter, before Christmas was down to -34. Maybe it's because the copper piping comes from a heated basement and doesn't stick out very far, but as long as there's nothing connected like a splitter tee or something, we've never had an issue. I finally replaced the 40 year old originals on the house last year because a couple weren't shutting off properly any more, but that was just because of age.
Kristian
Kristian
That was the year, the only year on record, that the Red River froze. That was a frikkin cold two weeks.
