My mom ran out of wood for her OWB in Wisconsin in mid February, and since I was planning to go there in early March (now) anyway, I suggested she shut down the wood side and heat with (very expensive) propane until I could get out there and cut up some dry, dead oak logs that I didn't get around to cutting last fall. I figured, back then, "Heck, it will probably be another mild winter and she'll be fine until March." Well, no dice.
We decided that instead of draining the boiler, she would keep small fires going in the firebox just to keep the thing from freezing. Foolishly, I assumed that there would be enough convection through the underground lines between the house system and the OWB, with the circulator turned off to save on gas, to keep them from freezing up.
Well, I was wrong. Frozen solid by all appearances. A friend suggested getting some piping or tubing smaller than the 1" pex, connecting it to the domestic hot water, and slowly feeding the smaller diameter pipe into the bigger one. Blast the ice directly with hot water. Melted ice and domestic water would flow out the end of the bigger pipe, and into a 5-gallon bucket. That was much better than my own idea, which was to buy a salamander-type propane heater and try to blow enough hot air into the piping assembly to (eventually) thaw it out. Dubious idea at best, with 70 feet of frozen-solid run buried about a foot under a plowed section of the yard.
So, I stopped at Menards on my way from the airport and picked up 100' of 1/2-inch pex and a hose bib adapter. It took about three hours to clear the return line--making steady progress the whole time--and about half an hour to break through the supply line. I have no idea why the discrepancy, but after pushing on that plastic pipe for 3 hours, I wasn't really interested in doing it all again. But I would have.
Anyway, bottom line is that we were heating with wood again by 10:00 p.m., so it was all good.
Don't know if this technique has been discussed here recently, but I highly recommend it as a cheap, effective and relatively fast solution to what may be a common problem this winter. And it's pretty much guaranteed to work.
We decided that instead of draining the boiler, she would keep small fires going in the firebox just to keep the thing from freezing. Foolishly, I assumed that there would be enough convection through the underground lines between the house system and the OWB, with the circulator turned off to save on gas, to keep them from freezing up.
Well, I was wrong. Frozen solid by all appearances. A friend suggested getting some piping or tubing smaller than the 1" pex, connecting it to the domestic hot water, and slowly feeding the smaller diameter pipe into the bigger one. Blast the ice directly with hot water. Melted ice and domestic water would flow out the end of the bigger pipe, and into a 5-gallon bucket. That was much better than my own idea, which was to buy a salamander-type propane heater and try to blow enough hot air into the piping assembly to (eventually) thaw it out. Dubious idea at best, with 70 feet of frozen-solid run buried about a foot under a plowed section of the yard.
So, I stopped at Menards on my way from the airport and picked up 100' of 1/2-inch pex and a hose bib adapter. It took about three hours to clear the return line--making steady progress the whole time--and about half an hour to break through the supply line. I have no idea why the discrepancy, but after pushing on that plastic pipe for 3 hours, I wasn't really interested in doing it all again. But I would have.
Anyway, bottom line is that we were heating with wood again by 10:00 p.m., so it was all good.
Don't know if this technique has been discussed here recently, but I highly recommend it as a cheap, effective and relatively fast solution to what may be a common problem this winter. And it's pretty much guaranteed to work.
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