Pipes freezing....?????

I am expecting maybe -20 night time temp and maybe 0 on Sunday. Never hurts to give things a bump once in a while just to be on the safe side.

I have had pipes freeze - I have a section of my kitchen that flies out over my deck - the pipes that run to the baseboard in this section are poorly insulated to say the least. I solved that problem by cutting that section out of the loop. That's going to confuse an inspector when I sell the house....

You can buy a timing device that will run your pumps (which is what the thermostat controls anyway in a hydronic system) for a few minutes every 30 or 60 minutes.

This is my second year, and first without the problem loop, of stove heating. It's supposed to get to -10f on Saturday, so I'll guess we see if I have problems anywhere else...

Mad Tom said:

I am expecting maybe -20 night time temp and maybe 0 on Sunday. Never hurts to give things a bump once in a while just to be on the safe side.

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That's kind of what I did last night. We had over night lows around -15 (-32 considering wind chill factor). I stoked the stove around 6pm last night. Around 11:30pm I tossed in a few more splits even though stove room temp was around 76. As I was heading off to bed I set the furnace at 68 due to the expected lows. I heard the furnace cycle around 6:30 this morning which is when I got up. I turned the furnace off and stoked up the stove again. All our water pipes are in our full basement. Being a fairly new woodburner I guess I'm just a little bit leery about pipes freezing down there......

This one may be better in the boiler room, but here is my 2 cents. I had a relay and transformer on my hot water boiler get stuck, causing the circulator pump to stay on. I had to wait a day or so to get the new part. I opened the zone valve for the downstairs to make use of the circ pump staying on. I turned down the aquastat so we would not roast out.

I'm thinking if you had to run that zone, open the zone valve and see if the circ pump kicks on. It is basically circulating the hot water until the water temp drops enough kicking the aquastat on firing the boiler. Just my 2 cents...

We're looking at -8 for Sunday and Monday morning lows. That's real cold in these parts. No part of the house will get below 55 because we have thermostats set for that. We close off our entry room off the garage due to heat escaping into that room that we're never in. This room has a strip of base board and has three exterior walls. So far, there have been a few times I needed to cycle the heat because it got to 32 degree's in that room. I'm on the fence to get a device that will cycle heat via a control unit tied to the zone valve. You can cycle it every X for X minutes. For the time being, I'll just use my programmable thermostat to kick on at 2:00AM and 5:00AM. I will do the 11:00PM and 7:00AM manually.

It got so cold here last year, we actually had a drain line feeding from house to septic tank to freeze a few inches under the ground. That stuff isn't fun to fool with when it is warm...not to mention when it is around 0*F.

stejus said:

We're looking at -8 for Sunday and Monday morning lows. That's real cold in these parts. No part of the house will get below 55 because we have thermostats set for that. We close off our entry room off the garage due to heat escaping into that room that we're never in. This room has a strip of base board and has three exterior walls. So far, there have been a few times I needed to cycle the heat because it got to 32 degree's in that room. I'm on the fence to get a device that will cycle heat via a control unit tied to the zone valve. You can cycle it every X for X minutes. For the time being, I'll just use my programmable thermostat to kick on at 2:00AM and 5:00AM. I will do the 11:00PM and 7:00AM manually.

Click to expand...

Now that is a wicked pissah idea - my thermostats are programmable, but I never use them because of the stove - just set them to run for 10 mins in the wee hours..

Central MA represent!

CarbonNeutral said:

stejus said:

We're looking at -8 for Sunday and Monday morning lows. That's real cold in these parts. No part of the house will get below 55 because we have thermostats set for that. We close off our entry room off the garage due to heat escaping into that room that we're never in. This room has a strip of base board and has three exterior walls. So far, there have been a few times I needed to cycle the heat because it got to 32 degree's in that room. I'm on the fence to get a device that will cycle heat via a control unit tied to the zone valve. You can cycle it every X for X minutes. For the time being, I'll just use my programmable thermostat to kick on at 2:00AM and 5:00AM. I will do the 11:00PM and 7:00AM manually.

Click to expand...

Now that is a wicked pissah idea - my thermostats are programmable, but I never use them because of the stove - just set them to run for 10 mins in the wee hours..

Central MA represent!

Click to expand...

I thought of this while researching the control unit tied to a zone valve. The thermostats I have for oil heat have 4 cycles a day. Wake, Leave, Return and Sleep. So I'll program like this.

Wake: 2:00AM - 80 degrees
Leave: 2:10AM - 55 degrees
Return: 5:00AM - 80 degrees
Sleep:5:10AM - 55 degrees

If I mess up, I'll go bankrupt heating the house to 80 degrees with Oil heat!

If you run a wood stove you should just fill your base board system with antifreeze and you have no worries .
I know that my washer pipes start to freeze at 14 below .
I run the dryer if it gets below -14. John

Mike821 said:

Hey all! I was wondering if anyone had any issues with pipes freezing. I have baseboard (hot water) heat upstairs. The temp is 70-74 deg all the time upstairs. My attic is the issue....pipes are insulated, but some outside walls are not that well insulated. As long as I have the heat on I dont have an issue...that is when heating with just the boiler via hot water. I have never heated my home exclusivly with the stove and dont know what to expect. I checked the other day in the attic and the temp was 40 deg on a 18 deg night.

I try to cycle the heat upstairs by setting my thermostat to 80 deg for about five minutes. This gets the water flowing in the pipes in case any ice is forming. This is good when I am home....lol or not passed out in front of my second wife....my stove. LOL

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Why do your pipes go through your attic?

HotCoals said:

Mike821 said:

Hey all! I was wondering if anyone had any issues with pipes freezing. I have baseboard (hot water) heat upstairs. The temp is 70-74 deg all the time upstairs. My attic is the issue....pipes are insulated, but some outside walls are not that well insulated. As long as I have the heat on I dont have an issue...that is when heating with just the boiler via hot water. I have never heated my home exclusivly with the stove and dont know what to expect. I checked the other day in the attic and the temp was 40 deg on a 18 deg night.

I try to cycle the heat upstairs by setting my thermostat to 80 deg for about five minutes. This gets the water flowing in the pipes in case any ice is forming. This is good when I am home....lol or not passed out in front of my second wife....my stove. LOL

Click to expand...

Why do your pipes go through your attic?

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I have water pipes to the apartment running thru the attic. It was that, or bust up the slab and move walls to run them. Mine are in the middle of the house, so not much of an issue now with higher ceilings and the stoves running.

I had a pipe freeze last week (oil hot water baseboard). The burner isn't working (tank issues) and I didn't think to drain the system or put in anti freeze. I had to turn the zone off at the burner.

Not to hijack, but shouldn't the circulator kick in if the burner is getting electric to keep that from happening? Educate me, please. I'm going to follow this thread.

I may be wrong, but it's my understanding in boiler systems that the thermostat controls only the pumps. The boiler will only kick on when it sees that the water circulating through the system has dropped below its internal thermostat system. So even with the boiler broken, but the pumps operating, you should have flow, at least until the temps can start to freeze moving water.

Thermostats usually only control zones.
Which will stop the flow of water.

When the thermostat calls for heat, it opens the zone valve, and an internal switch in the powerhead cycles the circ pump. Aquastat controls water temp. When it goes below the set temp, boiler fires. I usually turn aquastat down a little in the spring and fall since I do not need the boiler to heat water to such a high temp as needed in the winter. Look up "outdoor boiler reset controls" if you are looking to save a little money in heating dollars. There is a good video on "This Old House" website. I hope we are not going too far off OP here.

fishingpol said:

When the thermostat calls for heat, it opens the zone valve, and an internal switch in the powerhead cycles the circ pump. Aquastat controls water temp. When it goes below the set temp, boiler fires. I usually turn aquastat down a little in the spring and fall since I do not need the boiler to heat water to such a high temp as needed in the winter. Look up "outdoor boiler reset controls" if you are looking to save a little money in heating dollars. There is a good video on "This Old House" website. I hope we are not going too far off OP here.

Click to expand...

Some do control a circulating pump..but not all systems do that.
I help maintain 320 apartments in 60 buildings.
Ours are setup if the 5-7 apartments in a building are not calling for heat(zones closed) the water just circulates in a loop in the boiler room...so our thermostats just control the zones.
We're now going with 2 stage burners..well actually 2 stage gas valves in Lochinvar boilers..I like them.

fishingpol said:

When the thermostat calls for heat, it opens the zone valve, and an internal switch in the powerhead cycles the circ pump. Aquastat controls water temp. When it goes below the set temp, boiler fires. I usually turn aquastat down a little in the spring and fall since I do not need the boiler to heat water to such a high temp as needed in the winter. Look up "outdoor boiler reset controls" if you are looking to save a little money in heating dollars. There is a good video on "This Old House" website. I hope we are not going too far off OP here.

Click to expand...

I do, too, but I think others might be in the same boat, or need the experience and/or knowledge.


What happens if the thermostat calls for heat, and the burner does not respond?


**BB, BG, Fossil, etc, please let me know if I need a new thread here, thanks **

Then you would call a repairman.
Could be the pressure is to low causing the low pressure switch to shut the boiler down.
Could be a roll out safety switch ..pilot out or igniter bad..high limit was tripped..and a few other things could go wrong...bad gas valve..flapper in vent bad if it has one...there is more..lol.

thermostats in my house are set for 64 (little children in the house) so if the temp falls to that it remains constant. I have on room on a third zone that I cannot get the stove heat to warm, so that one zone runs consistently and would be the only zone i would have to worry about potential freezing problems. But who knows, if I insulate the outside walls of the garage, I may be able to keep that room warm with the stove.

Stejus may have been referring to a device called a ThermGuard. Saw it mentioned in one of the forums here and checked it out. It easily hooks into a thermostat, and calls for heat every x minutes in 15 minute intervals (up to once every 24 hours) and keeps calling for 1 minute up to 90 minutes. I have scewy wiring and an overly complicated system (hydro-air central heat/AC, AND heat pumps, so I couldn't get it to work with my system. But the inventor, a fellow named John Walsh at Bear Mountain Design, spent 3 hrs on the phone with me trying to get it to work. He couldn't have been nicer. It's very straight forward and I can imagine it would work great in most systems. I thought for $70 it would have been well worth the peace of mind.

CarbonNeutral said:

I may be wrong, but it's my understanding in boiler systems that the thermostat controls only the pumps. The boiler will only kick on when it sees that the water circulating through the system has dropped below its internal thermostat system. So even with the boiler broken, but the pumps operating, you should have flow, at least until the temps can start to freeze moving water.

Click to expand...

I belive you'll find that if the boiler is set up as a "cold start" the burner is set to fire when the thermostat calls for heat, at least when the boiler temp is not maxed out. There is no internal low temp thermostat. I use a heat manager on mine which scavenges any residual heat first which in turn delays the firing. If the burner is not working the pumps will still operate. I would question the wisdom of allowing near zero deg water to circulate through a boiler. This would cause an awful condensation problem in the boiler. The only real fix is to get the pipes in the heating envelope of the house. If that's not possible, there is a pipe freeze warning system out there, I am not sure of the name of it. The other fix would be to put glycol in your system. I am not crazy about it but it can save you from a lot of pipe damage.

Zones can be heated, off, or on freeze protection cycle as selected by row of toggle switches at bottom.

Timer activates freeze protection zones every so often according to timer wheel program.

--ewd