Hey Guys and Gals , Does anyone have any failproof ways of boxing in the main water line coming into a house on pilings so that it won’t freeze in the winter months ? Aside from building a box to the ground and loading it with insulation and wrapping line with heat tape! Any ingenius ideas out there ? Main line is the black plastic Water line
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Replies
I have a lot of experience with this, having lived in various temporary situations as we built a house. And yes, I've had to resort to torches, hair dryers, etc. to thaw pipes when Old Man Winter came calling.
Why are you averse to using heat tape? No electricity?
Is the water line suspended in the air or below ground?
My first recomendation would be to spiral electrical tape to fasten a thermostatically controled heat tape to the pipe. The thermostat sensor needs to be exposed to ambient air. Cover the rest of the apparatus with foam pipe insulation. Then another spiral of electrical tape to keep the whole thing snug.
Scott.
Depends how much work you want to do. If you never want to think about it again this is what I'd recommend:
Excavate down 18" and surround the pipe with 3" of rigid insulation extending out at least 2 ft. Build an insulated box from PT framing and PT plywood extending from the rigid on the ground to the underside of your floor joists. Leave the area immediately around the pipe clear of insulation and provide a screened vent into the heated space of the room above. This just really extends the building envelope down below the frost level, using the house's heat rather than another separate system.
What F&T said. You can't merely insulate -- insulation doesn't provide warmth (it only slows the loss of warmth) and once the pipe freezes (which it will if you only rely on insulation), it'll be a bee-atch to thaw. You need to insulate AND provide heat, either with heat tape or similar, or a vent to conditioned space.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Everything fits, until you put glue on it.
Mike, I agree insulation only slows rate of heat transfer not stop it. Had one guy who resisted heat tape, so super insulated, then put a thermostatically controlled valve on the water line that just opened and ran water down the drain when temp inside the insulation dropped too low.
"ran water down the drain when temp inside the insulation dropped too low"
Tried that once.
Ended up with 30' of frozen drain line. ;-(Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PAEverything fits, until you put glue on it.
While insulation just slows down the heat transfer, if you slow it down enough then the heat the pipe picks up from both the house above and the ground below by conduction might keep it from freezing. To help this, you could strap the plastic pipe with a beefy piece of copper or aluminum that goes up into the heated space. Then insulate the whole box very well.I saw in a store recently a manufactured version of something I have done to keep outside faucets from freezing. The store version was a piece of EPS foam in the shape of a dome, like a beehive, that gets put over the faucet, with a drawstring to hold it tight to the house. My version is a piece of thick foam rubber, slit so the foam chunk swallows the faucet. Then I put a ziplock baggie over the foam and secure it up against the house with a piece of string. The heat leak along the pipe from inside the house is enough to keep the water in the faucet from freezing. Even without the foam diaper on the faucet, it takes a really cold night to freeze up the faucet; the heat conduction through the copper and water is that good.Edit: how high up on pilings are you talking, a couple of feet or a whole story for coastline building flood protection? That will make a big difference in how you have to protect the line.
Edited 10/7/2009 10:03 am ET by DickRussell
Pyrotechnix lie. Order it at your local plumbing supply warehouse. They will know the correct spelling. Electric line inside. Works great as long as you have electricity.
Have a good day
CLiffy
Is this pyrotechnix a heat tape ? Trying to get away from this , House is 300 yards from the Ocean and in winter Storms Electricity has been known to go out for hours ,so Cold as hell, no electricity , ,recipe for a freeze up ! This is one reason I don't want to rely on Heat Tape ,the other is the chance of fire . Heat tape has been the culprit in its share of fires . Thanx to all who have helped solve this problem. I was thinking of building a box around pipe and spraying it with the closed cell polyurethane insulation but I think some one had it right with the idea of surrounding the pipe with small box and keeping the end of it tight to the bottom side of the floor and exposed to the heat of the inside of the house and then filling the bigger box with the closed cell insulation. Again thanx for all of your input and I'm still open to ideas Thanx Maguire
It is not tape. It is a conductor that goes inside your pipe. It does rely on electricity so I guess it would not meet your needs. Good luck with the spray foam enclosure.
Have a good day
Cliffy
How cold does it get? In theory, you could build an insulated box around the pipe, open at the bottom, and let heat from the ground keep the box warm.
As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place. --Rabbi Sheila Peltz, on her visit to Auschwitz
If you felt really ambitious you could dig deep enough that the ground would provide heat for the whole house through the box.
In theory you could bury a ground loop and arrange it so that gravity flow would convey heat into the box.
As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place. --Rabbi Sheila Peltz, on her visit to Auschwitz
Now we are getting somewhere.
run the line below frost level into the middle of the house, then stub it up. that way the line is never exposed to a freeze. that's about as fail proof as you can get.
The house is on piers.