Water supply and freezing temperatures?

Luis G

Luis G

<i><b>Problemator</b></i>
Staff member
How do cities manage the supply of water if the temperature drops below 0ºC? :confuse3:
 
Right, so main water pipes are buried deep and the water is always in motion, making it harder to freeze. But what about the small pipe that goes from the street to your house?

If you are not using any water then there's no flow. This also applies to the pipes within the house, taps and valves.
 
From the main to the house is still buried deep. If you have a basement, it enters there, into the heated house. Even with a slab foundation, the area under the slab holds heat and won't freeze. But for somewhere like my mobile home ... I use an electric heat tape and insulate the pipe. That keeps it from freezing down to -15C. If there's a risk of it dropping lower than that, I leave a tap trickle. Not a lot, but pretty much any flow breaks up any ice that might try to form. I've had flow down past -25C. At that point, i'm more worried about the inside pipes than the outside one.

Also, remember that before the temp really submarines, we've usually got a few feet of snow. That does an amazing job of keeping the ground from freezing deep. A dry winter is much more worrysome.
 
And if you are leaving your house for a couple of days, you turn off the water and open the taps, draining the pipes so they don't burst.
 
paul_valaru said:
And if you are leaving your house for a couple of days, you turn off the water and open the taps, draining the pipes so they don't burst.
Click to expand...

If you have a spray handle on the end of your garden hose,its a good idea to remember to turn off the tap and drain the hose,so the freezing water doesn't continue into the house plumbing. (had an Uncle that forgot to do this,costly and messy):disgust2:
 
The foam tape isn't worth piss. Any kind of obstruction, awkward space, bends in the pipe, etc ... and you wind up with gaps. Not to mention that it's got a worthless r value even if you pull off a perfect job. The self sealing foam tubes (3/4 on a 1/2 copper pipe leaves the perfect space for the heat tape) slide all inside a 1¼ PVC pipe is what I installed. Any more and you risk allowing the heat tape to overheat.



I know you're wondering. I split the PVC lengthwise with a jigsaw and glued it back together in place when I was all done testing the system.
 
eh, get the pipe below 2.5 feet deep, and it'll hold good with good pipe schedule 40 pvc or something.
 
Don't leave your house unheated...I've seen it happen (places we do work) where a townhouse or apartment has been empty because the occupant was away on vacation and to save coin before they left they turned the temp WAY WAY down...then the pipes burst. When I went home for Christmas I made sure my heat was set to stay at about 15C the whole time I was gone...
 
Last winter my sewer froze up.. I had to take off the pipe to the septic tank, bring it in the (I bet you thought I wuz gonna say, "house") SHOP, and melt it out. THIS winter it's real bad cuz we ain't got no snow, and if temps drop to -40°F, the frost line is gonna go deep, and freeze even my water lines 8 feet down! (It has happened) That's real bad. and expensive. I buried heat-taped and insulated line to 3 feet UNDER the trailer, and behind insulated skirting. If frost line goes down past 3 feet, away from the home, then my line might freeze before it slopes down toward the well. That'd be bad. Then I'd hafta move to Texas.

/me secretly awaits the cold snap to hit without the benefit of snow cover..
 
Loon, insulating the skirt only serves to hold the cold in there. It's an unheated space. Insulating it serves no purpose. If you're worried about the lack of snow, you can do one of two things. First, get a local farmer to deliver a few bales of hay and lay that down. 4 to 8 inches will stop the frost ... cold. Clean up, tho, is a bitch. The more modern alternative has a higher initial cost. Fill some extra large garbage bags with fibreglass insulation and one heavy rock at the bottom for ballast. Serves the same purpose, but with easier clean up. But storing them from year to year is a pain.

I've had to deal with a drain main freezing under the trailer before. It wasn't PVC, but some sort of fibre-asphalt tube. Froze solid and split. Left several inches of ... you know what under the trailer, and encased everything in frozen toilet water. Had to rent a jack hammer to clear it all out in the less that 2' crawl space. Belly down. The missus got a rather severe talking to about the amount of toilet paper needed for a clean up.
 
The ex-wife would wrap the TP around her hand 20-25 times for one wipe. The whole family sided with her on the issue when I tried to say what a waste that is.
 
She wasn't that far from it. She died that in lieu of washing her hands on the way out of the bathroom.
 
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