Quote:
Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby
It's not a couple of hours. Forecast for Lady Lake is 32° and below from 1AM til 9AM tomorrow morning. That's 8 hours of freezing or below temperatures.
Even if it takes 2-3 hours for an uninsulated laundry shed to get as cold inside as it is outside, that still means over 5 hours of below-freezing. That's enough to freeze a 2-litre bottle of water. And that means it's enough to freeze pipes.
My question to the ones who say to trickle the water - I really have never heard of this, and I'm in a manufactured home. It's well insulated INSIDE - including the windows themselves which have been replaced with Andersen double-hung double-panes. The laundry shed, as I said previously, is only partially insulated. There's no attic, but the AC and heat ductwork runs above the ceiling - not in the floor like the older model double-wides. The hot water heater is accessed through a panel outside the house, not inside it. It is not insulated at all.
If trickling is the trick to preventing frozen pipes, which faucets do you trickle? Is having the kitchen sink drip for 8 hours good enough? Or the master bathroom? Or all of them, or just the tub in the guest bathroom? Or at least two? Whichever is furthest from the hot water heater?
I honestly have zero idea how this works!
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Could be interesting how the tankless hot water heaters installed south of 44 plumbed on the exterior walls hold up...
Running water will take longer to freeze than still water. A pencil thin stream from outside hose bibs and faucets (hot and cold) on exterior walls is cheap insurance.
If a pipe should become frozen, then there are two reasons for keeping an inside faucet open. First, it will allow for the freezing water to expand without bursting the pipe and second, as the water in the pipe thaws, it will temporarily have a higher water pressure since the remaining ice will be restricting its flow. This higher pressure could damage other parts of the plumbing system if there is no where for it to flow.
Don't know what to do with commodes with water lines on exterior walls other than flush them occasionally.