Frigid temps and frozen pipes

Excellent advice. The kind of cold coming to New England we don't get very often...gonna have to run those boilers folks

I also run my boiler two or three times a day whenever the temps will go below freezing. With it this cold coming up, I might set the thermostat to run every few hours overnight. I have a few pipes on the outside walls.

"luckily" my stove isn't powerful enough to keep my place at temp in the really cold, so the furnace still runs.

Definitely a great tip. I came home a month ago to see a burst pipe in the garage spraying water at the door to the house, and directly onto 3 ton of pellets.
Luckily I live close enough to the Vermont WP factory, so I transported them myself. The bags are pretty much hole free. Had I been burning something that was trucked across the country, I may have had many bags of sawdust on my hands.
The water did find its way between cracks in the wall to the house. Water ran behind the plywood into the basement. Luckily they used advantech in construction, so there was no damage. Just a puddle to mop up.
I will certainly never forget to turn off all external spigots again. Could have been much worse.

jslinger said:

Could have been much worse

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You got off easy! going downstairs to shut off my non "frost free" hose bibs now...good thread!

I place a digital thermometer in different places in the garage. My garage is un heated, but insulated and my garage doors offer a little bit of insulation. It has never dropped below 40* in there but I am still vigilant about things in there.

chriscarl said:

I place a digital thermometer in different places in the garage. My garage is un heated, but insulated and my garage doors offer a little bit of insulation. It has never dropped below 40* in there but I am still vigilant about things in there.

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If your garage is unheated the 40 Deg must be coming up from the floor from ground temperature. A well insulated house(with the heat off) with an uninsulated basement can stay above freezing for the whole winter sometimes,iv seen this happen personally.

Not sure if I should worry about this... its about a 20 year old home, 2x6 w/ R19 in the walls with a poured foundation and HW baseboards. My basement is cold but probably is fluttering around in the lower 50's... all the floor joists to my basement are insulated and because I have an indirect tank for DHW the oil boiler has to kick on anyway when hot water is called for. Maybe I should fire up the baseboards every so often just to keep things going when it gets really cold this weekend.

I have domestic hot water off the boiler so it is running...I need to cycle the second floor heat to be safe, I have a pipe in a crawl space.

I've been very lucky.. the temps in the morning here have been 22 below at times and my pipes don't freeze. I have a crawl space and only the pellet stove running...

CBL said:

Not sure if I should worry about this... its about a 20 year old home, 2x6 w/ R19 in the walls with a poured foundation and HW baseboards. My basement is cold but probably is fluttering around in the lower 50's... all the floor joists to my basement are insulated and because I have an indirect tank for DHW the oil boiler has to kick on anyway when hot water is called for. Maybe I should fire up the baseboards every so often just to keep things going when it gets really cold this weekend.

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Have same setup for DHW...Basement has not gotten below 50 so far but I am anal about it.
when it get's down in the teens I shut my stove down and run the baseboard heat from midnight till early AM.
Usually will set themostat to kick on at 55 when stove not running.

Tonyray said:

Have same setup for DHW...Basement has not gotten below 50 so far but I am anal about it.
when it get's down in the teens I shut my stove down and run the baseboard heat from midnight till early AM.
Usually will set themostat to kick on at 55 when stove not running.

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Good to know! I actually ran out and bought a couple thermometers to keep an eye on the temps.

I never had a issue with my "dungeon" basement it never got below 50 deg. Now my crawl space under The master bedroom is another story when it gets below 15. The hot water pipes to sink and shower like to slush up at the 90deg elbow no matter how much insulation I put on the pipes.

I agree CBL. My house is 10 years old and I have the same setup. I am not too worried about any pipes freezing in the basement.
But when it gets down to -15 I like to turn on the heat in the basement just in case. (Since I didn't build the house myself)
I often wonder about how low the outside temps could get before I would have an issue. But the only real way to do that is to record the temperature when the pipe bursts. I am sure all would be fine with outside temps going as low as they ever would in VT. But, I might as well spend a few dollars in oil, in order to prevent water damage.

jslinger said:

I agree CBL. My house is 10 years old and I have the same setup. I am not too worried about any pipes freezing in the basement.
But when it gets down to -15 I like to turn on the heat in the basement just in case. (Since I didn't build the house myself)
I often wonder about how low the outside temps could get before I would have an issue. But the only real way to do that is to record the temperature when the pipe bursts. I am sure all would be fine with outside temps going as low as they ever would in VT. But, I might as well spend a few dollars in oil, in order to prevent water damage.

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so far here in Pa, North of Phila, my full basement[un-insulated] would be concidered below the frost line which helps.....with an oil furnace running for heat past 3 yrs, the basement was always around 60 degrees.. now that I have the new Harman P61A, THE furnace only kicks on for Domestic Hot water and the temp in the basement as of today is 54 degrees.
I don't see how it would ever get down to 32 degrees freezing but I still am concerned about it. only takes a small opening of outside draft to freeze a 90 elbow.
Fridays overnite low will be 17 and Sat overnight will be 4 degrees..as I said in previous post, I shut stove off around midnight and set downstairs and upstairs thermostats to mid to low 50's just to be safe..wife is up around 6:30 to fire stove up and with the P61 on full blast, our downstairs is back up to 72 degrees from overnight mid 50's in about 1 hour. so, when it's bitter cold, a gallon or 2 of oil overnight and extra pellets in the AM is not too bad for piece of mind... only thing that annoys me is my basement pipes will prob never freeze but I'm afraid to test it.

iceguy4 said:

You got off easy! going downstairs to shut off my non "frost free" hose bibs now...good thread!

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I put a shark bite ball valve on the pex water line that goes to my two outside hose bibs. Every fall I close the ball valve, yank the pex out of the downstream side and just let that hang down to drain a bit. The hose bibs are frost free but I figure it can't freeze if water isn't connected! Takes two minutes each fall and then one minute in the spring to shove the pex back into the ball valve.

I have a crawl space that it worry about. I wrapped my pipes with the electric heat tape but still worry. I was told that I can put a second thermostat on my furnace, if that is true I am going to wire in the second thermostat and set it at 45 degrees. From what I am told the furnace will kick on from either thermostat that is calling for heat. Between the heat of the furnace and the air duct I'll cut in this should do the trick for the few nights a year it is needed.

fmsm said:

the furnace will kick on from either thermostat that is calling for heat

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True...... wired parallel.

I second boo boo's comment. I have one myself(forced air).

I have one pipe I always keep an eye on. The thermguard takes care of any cold air issues in the basement. Confirmed results w/ a IR temp probe.

iceguy4 said:

True...... wired parallel.

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THANKS

When it gets this cold I always leave a faucet dripping throughout the night to keep the water moving just enough to try and keep it from freezing. Just in case. It's 1 here right now. Stay warm everyone.

boo boo said:

Reminder and also to the new pellet burners.
There was a good thread last year when the temps dropped well bellow freezing that if your stove is on your main floor your Furnas or boiler is not keeping your cellar or basement as warm and pipes have frozen because of this. Also pipes on outside walls.
I insulated the floor joists in my basement last year because of this and it made a big difference getting rid of some cold air penetrations.
Good luck and happy new year

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Until I come up with a new solution, we still run the oil boiler for hot water, so basement stays just warm enough to keep the pipes happy.