Fireview has kept us so warm our heating pipes froze!

[robbydanilow]

Our oil furnace has not come on for heat in the three weeks we have been burning in our new Fireview. Its been great, my wife and I love how warm its been. This AM I decided to crank the heat instead of reloading the stove being that it was 3 below and I was 15 minutes late. Sat down to tie my shoes and realized I heard the circulator but not the clicking of the baseboards expanding. Trouble shot the problem and called my oil company. They sent a tech out to confirm. Could pay extra to have someone come and use a pipe defroster but warm weathers coming. Thinking I will hold out as the damage is done. It has been 65 to 70 consistently in the house. Any thoughts? I am in CT on the shoreline. There are some on this site in much colder climates. What to do to prevent this?

 

[begreen]

I regularly advise folks to run their boiler or furnace a couple times a day during serious cold snaps for just this reason. At a minimum put an electric heater in the basement and set it at a low temp. If you have a drafty basement or pipes in the outside walls the pipes can be particularly vulnerable. Seal up those leaks and don't be afraid to run the boiler or furnace a few times a day to heat the areas that the stove can't reach. It's cheap insurance as compared to a burst pipe.

 

[firefighterjake]

This is just one of the reasons why I will crank up my oil boiler during an extended sub-zero cold snap . . . a few gallons of oil is almost always cheaper than a repair bill . . . the other two reasons are to make things a little warmer in the parts of the house that tend to be a bit cooler normally and to "exercise" the system.

 

[eclecticcottage]

Find where it's frozen and warm it with a hair dryer. Better than letting it sit frozen.

 

[robbydanilow]

Yeah i think its going to come down to running the heat a little at least until I can find where the drafts are coming in. Basement will be finished and heated by the spring but its the bedrooms over the garage that I am worried about. Floors are always cold may need to re-insulate.

 

[robbydanilow]

Frozen in the wall somewhere... temps are on the rise tonight into tomorrow. Funny most of the pipes in the basement are exposed and appear fine. Any ideas on finding a hidden freeze? Hidden burst pipes are easy once they thaw .

 

[stejus]

When temps outside dip below 10 degrees, I cycle my 2 zone heat (oil burner) at least a couple times a day. Just a 10 minute cycle is all it takes. If it dips below zero, more frequent. My oil burner uses .75 gals an hour, so like firefirejake said, a few bucks is well worth it to prevent major repairs. Other conditions, (insulation, cold drafts near pipes, crawlspace) may require more frequent cycles.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I run my upstairs zone when it gets down into the single digits. It gets a bit cold up there anyway. I normally don't care about it though and leave the thermostat set a 50. Nobody really goes up there. Turning it up to 54 lets the boiler fire a few times.

 

[RCCARPS]

Try this in the future. Made to prevent frozen pipes. Cheap insurance.

http://www.bearmountaindesign.com/

 

[Rob From Wisconsin]

We also have a similar situtation in our home, even though it is less than 25yrs old.
Our house has a propane boiler system with two (2) zones - one for all the wall radiators
and another for two in-floor heat regions. One on those in-floor areas came into being as a
result of the previous owner expanding a mud room into the attached garage.
To keep this region's boiler lines from freezing due to a lack of operating our boiler
(thank you woodstove!), I have our thermostat for the in-floor heating set as our
secondary backup heating when the stove falls behind. As a result, we get several
short firings per day to keep it "honest".

Sometimes I just contemplate draining those lines altogether so they aren't an issue anymore......

 

[Dave A.]

The IR thermo is a good tool for locating the freeze ups. That's how I've found my problem areas with a hydronic baseboard system. And as electric cottage mentioned, a hair dryer is a good tool to safely defrost the frozen areas once you find them.

 

[Anthony]

This happened to me last year. the heating pipes in my slab froze. to try and freeze them, i had the wood stove and kerosene heater pumping the rooms to 130F and the pipes were still frozen. i had to wait 3 days for the cold streak to break. thank god the pipes never burst or i was looking at a repair bill in the multiple thousands. Now when a cold streak comes, i keep the heat at 65 which cycles a few times during the night. i also manually cycle the heat twice a day.

i read online that houses with wood stoves pay higher home insurance mainly for the fact that they tend to freeze pipes more.

wish you the best and hope your pipes don't burst!

 

[simple.serf]

This can be a problem for us, so I open the door the the garage (where the well pump/pipes and the boiler are), turn the heat up to 60, put an electric heater in the coldest part of the garage and run the stove as hot as possible. When we were below zero, the boiler was running almost constantly, but if it above zero it doesn't need to cycle much, and if we are above about 10, the stove can keep up.

 

[danham]

You can also put antifreeze in a forced hot water heating sytem. The tradeoff is that it tends to corrode/degrade the zone valves faster than plain water, but occasional valve replacement is potentially a lot cheaper than damage from a burst pipe.

-dan

 

[robbydanilow]

Well the cold snap broke and I turned the pressure back on to the boiler and ran the heat. No leaks. Think I will manually turn the heat up a few times when i gets cold. The basement will soon be finished and heated so zone 1 shouldn't freeze but the back bedrooms may still freeze. Going to look into the timer RCCARPS posted as a cheap backup for when I might forget to cycle the heat. My furnace guy didn't recommend the antifreeze solution maybe because out hot water coil is on the boiler next to the heat coil. Any way all is well and now I know to cycle the heat regardless of our need for it. Like many have said a few gallons of oil will be cheap insurance against a messy repair.

 

[begreen]

Phew, good to hear there were no leaks.

 

[robbydanilow]

Thanks, Lesson learned...

 

[WiscWoody]

Well the cold snap broke and I turned the pressure back on to the boiler and ran the heat. No leaks. Think I will manually turn the heat up a few times when i gets cold. The basement will soon be finished and heated so zone 1 shouldn't freeze but the back bedrooms may still freeze. Going to look into the timer RCCARPS posted as a cheap backup for when I might forget to cycle the heat. My furnace guy didn't recommend the antifreeze solution maybe because out hot water coil is on the boiler next to the heat coil. Any way all is well and now I know to cycle the heat regardless of our need for it. Like many have said a few gallons of oil will be cheap insurance against a messy repair.

Check your water levels on the boiler and see if it drops over time since the pipe is in a wall it could be a very slow leaker but hopefully not. Pipes can freeze in a confined area when other pipes in what would seem to be more vulnerable since there is no other large space to mix warmer air with the cold air. IMO

 

[WiscWoody]

I worked in maintenance for a large school district for many years. In some cases we put antifreeze in some steam to hydronic converters if we had a freeze up like in a vestibule heater. It get ranky smelling after years but in a closed loop its a non issue.You dont have to protect it like we do our cars up here. bot if you lower the freeze point to 0 even that is a big difference from 32F

 

[danham]

Well the cold snap broke and I turned the pressure back on to the boiler and ran the heat. No leaks. Think I will manually turn the heat up a few times when i gets cold. The basement will soon be finished and heated so zone 1 shouldn't freeze but the back bedrooms may still freeze. Going to look into the timer RCCARPS posted as a cheap backup for when I might forget to cycle the heat. My furnace guy didn't recommend the antifreeze solution maybe because out hot water coil is on the boiler next to the heat coil. Any way all is well and now I know to cycle the heat regardless of our need for it. Like many have said a few gallons of oil will be cheap insurance against a messy repair.

Believe me, I'm not cheerleading in favor of antifreeze: it's messy and can cause problems. But FWIW, my system also has the hot water coil right next to the boiler (in a tank) and I've had no problems with that portion of the setup.

The reason I'm willing to put up with the downsides of antifreeze is that this setup is in a seasonal rental property I own. The biggest threat is a winter ice/snow storm during which the power fails for an extended period. This happened last winter and after driving in horrible conditions for half an hour I had to hike in (private road & driveway not plowed) and run the water in sinks etc. to keep it from freezing. No way to do that for the heating pipes, so I was very glad they had that blue glop in them.

My own home is heated by hot air and I love it when that furnace stays cold and quiet through a zero-degree night, with the insert taking up the slack.

-dan

 

[Slow1]

Our system froze up a couple years ago (attic installed hydro-air air handler). HVAC company came and added anti-freeze. No problems since.

However, I do give it a spin up at least once a day when it is crazy cold (like last week). Just turn each zone on until I feel good hot air out of the vents then return it to rest state. I figure this is cheap insurance against a freeze/burst and if for some reason we needed the central heat to kick in (unexpected leaving of the house) then I have confidence it will work. Being a manual process though I don't even think of it most of the time and thus only on really cold snaps (like highs in teens or below zero nights) get this effort.

 

[Enzo's Dad]

Frozen pipes suck, Its not fixing the pipe thats the big deal, it is fixing the sheet rock. When I first bought my house I shut off the second floor heat. the pipe runs through 3 crawl spaces in a cape . I found out the hard way that it does not take much to make them freeze. I now have pipe wrap, and insulation around them just to make the system efficient, but they still could freeze without moving the water. My stove can keep my second floor in the low 60's, so I set the thermostat to 66. This keeps the water moving and really doesnt use a ton of oil to raise the temp 3 or 4 degrees. Like was set ealier using 25 gallons of oil a month sure beats the $2500 plumbing and sheetrock bill(the bill for my pipe burst in the ceiling above my kitchen).

 

[Oldhippie]

Well the cold snap broke and I turned the pressure back on to the boiler and ran the heat. No leaks. Think I will manually turn the heat up a few times when i gets cold. The basement will soon be finished and heated so zone 1 shouldn't freeze but the back bedrooms may still freeze. Going to look into the timer RCCARPS posted as a cheap backup for when I might forget to cycle the heat. My furnace guy didn't recommend the antifreeze solution maybe because out hot water coil is on the boiler next to the heat coil. Any way all is well and now I know to cycle the heat regardless of our need for it. Like many have said a few gallons of oil will be cheap insurance against a messy repair.

That's what I've been doing since 79. If it's below 10'F I do it about every 12 hours.. even it it's just for a few minutes. Have never had a problem, and I do have a 1 car under on one side of the house and the hot water pipes run under that side of the house.. so it has happened where I did need to go through the drill you just went through. Since then I've added more insulation and tightened up sore air leaks.

 

[Paulywalnut]

This happened to me years ago on the shady side of the house. I tried everything trying to thaw it out.
Finally I had to call a plumber and he did something with some cables and I think a battery to heat alot
of it at the same time. I never saw it done my wife told me how they did it, but to this day I run hot water
through a couple of times a day to keep it warm.