frozen pipes

[juldea]

Diagnosis: the heat from the furnace to my house having been turned off, the pipes were allowed to sit in the cold and hence froze over (I don't understand the process involved that would have the gas-heat pipes freeze, since it was just those and not the hot water which is working fine, but I accept that it sounds reasonable.) Efforts are being made to unfreeze these pipes, and in the meantime I'm stuck huddled around space heaters.

Oh, for extra fun: I had one space heater of my own, but I borrowed another from hakamadare and chaiya. Of course it made sense to me to plug it into the same outlet as my computer, and flipped a breaker. ;) That has since been fixed and extension cords are being utilized to spread the power usage out over different circuits in the apartment.

Heh. Whee.

Comments

[crimson5.livejournal.com]

Reason #259 that I will never move any farther north than I currently am. And will move as far south as I can, just as soon as I find an area I like. Florida, Texas, California, and Alabama are all out for various reasons, any other suggestions?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Arizona. There are a lot of cool people in Arizona. Just not temperature-wise. ;)

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

It is possible that the heating pipes are in more exposed places than the water pipes.

Space heaters draw a lot of juice, usually well over 50% of the rating of any circuit. They should always be on separate circuits. Some time spent reverse labeling the fusebox (that is labeling each outlet with the circuit number of the breaker it is on) would ease this problem in the future.

Best of luck getting this fixed soon. Stay warm.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Yes, but what is there inside heating pipes to freeze? I know that it is gas heat, and if it got cold enough to freeze gasses... I am completely ignorant of how the heat works, I have realized, and I should probably fix this. Ignorance = bad.

I do know that space heaters eat large amounts of electricity. I had simply temporarily turned off my brain when I plugged it into my power strip. I suppose I'm very lucky that nothing was actually damaged.

While I do not have labels on the fusebox and outlets, I do have knowledge of what outlets in the house are on separate circuits. This is how I was able to put that second space heater on an outlet that wouldn't overload anything after the, "Doh!" moment.

For the record, I am VERY prone to, "Quit talking to me like I'm stupid!!" frustration, but I am avoiding it in this case because we don't really talk all that much for you to know so. ;) That said, your whole second paragraph from someone else would have definitely aroused that frustration from me.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Not to -- y'know -- sound like I'm talking to you like you're stupid, but are you sure it's the gas lines that froze, and not the heating-water lines? I can't see how gas lines would freeze.

My suspicion would be that you have forced-water heat, which is to say there is a separate, closed-loop water system where water is heated in the basement by a boiler that runs to each radiator, and that it is those water lines that have frozen. In such a case the it'll take some time to unfreeze, since most of those lines are buried in walls and whatnot and the pump can't push hot water to the frozen bits to unfreeze them. On the plus side it should be warm today and warmer tomorrow, so that should loosen it up; if this happened next weekend, you'd be stuck to doing silly things like blowing hair dryers into holes in the wall. It's also worth it to look for leaks (well, $landlord should look for leaks), because the ice might have expanded enough to break something.

And for the record, when our heat went out last week I *also* blew the fuse plugging in a space heater. Well, technically, it was turning on a light so I could move the space heater to another circuit but....same idea.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

You're not talking to me like I'm stupid, because I already said I'm ignorant here. ;) That said, I did suspect that perhaps the heating system worked by using gas to heat up water that would then run to the radiators. And yep, we're aware that burst pipes might happen. I hope not, though, as that would suck mightily.

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

It is a gas-powered furnace with forced water heat, yes. We have another space heater aimed at the pipes in the crawl space, and that seems to have helped a lot, at the very least.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Yay! :)

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

While I do not have labels on the fusebox

this is arguably something we (as landlords) should do; give me a shout if there’s a particular time when i can spend a few minutes going around your apartment and flipping breakers to see which lights turn off.

also, the various explanations about forced-water heat are correct.

-steve

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Well, I did do a bit of the breaker-flipping last night to get a generalized sense of things. You were right; the living room and bedroom are all on the same circuit! Craziness. But sure, if you wanna come by and do a full testing, I'm sure we can work it out.

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

Sorry, about inducing frustration, especially in your situation. The problem is deciding what is insulting obvious, and what is useful new information. For instance, gas heating pipes (from the furnace to your radiators) are filled with hot water (or possibly, though I expect not, steam). It was these that froze. There is also a gas pipe from the street to your furnace which carries gas. I would have hesitated to include this information on the basis that it might be too insultingly simple. On the other hand, reverse labeling of outlets is an idea which I have never seen anyone else do, and which took me twenty years of messing with fuse boxes to figure out. And few people seem to have any idea how much current their appliances draw. So I thought I was truly adding new information. Sigh.

I answer questions like this frequently on the 'net, in a forum with complete newbies, and experienced professionals, and getting the right mix of information is always tough. Again, sorry that I missed in your case.

Thank You Kindly,

Corwyn

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I didn't actually get frustrated in this case - but I noticed that I felt a little bit of, "Duh, I know that, silly!" Also, I don't even feel that I can really defend this reaction I have, considering I'm aware that people have differing spheres and levels of knowledge and you have no way to really know which I have where. So no worries and no need to apologize, I'm not actually bothered! (Well, by this, at least.) :)

Glad to hear that my idea that I had worked out this morning of how the heat works was in fact the right idea. Score one for me!

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

Before you moved in, we hired an electrician to upgrade the service to the apartment and fix the circuit breaker labelling. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the electrician hasn't been available to come back and finish the job for a few months, and now the ground is frozen, so he can't dig holes for the grounding rods or something. So that's on hold for the moment.

In terms of the heating pipes versus water pipes, this is what I think happened: londo turned off the heat for the apartment during a blizzard. Which was silly of him, but I trust you to dole out appropriate punishment. The apartment stopped calling for heat, which meant that the furnace stopped having to heat those associated pipes. Which meant that they froze, almost up to the point where they meet the furnace in the basement, and we're still trying to figure out if they've burst a seam somewhere in the crawl space. The hot water pipes, however, are constantly being heated, so they didn't freeze. This is possibly an energy inefficiency for the house, but the crawl space under the house is damn cold, so it kept those pipes from freezing.

The pipes going into the crawl space are now piping hot (pun!) after our night of heat application to the pipes, so I'm hopeful that there's heat in your apartment now. No one is answering the phone at your place, however, so I can't be certain. I didn't want to just go in there and check without talking to you first, in case someone's home sleeping or something.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

This all sounds quite reasonable. *crosses fingers in hopes there was no bursting*

Taken to email.

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

The hot water pipes, however, are constantly being heated, so they didn’t freeze. This is possibly an energy inefficiency for the house, but the crawl space under the house is damn cold, so it kept those pipes from freezing.

in addition (if i remember my basic chemistry correctly), ice crystals form more easily in still water than in moving water, so even if the water pump only turns on occasionally, it still helps to retard freezing.

-steve

[anitra.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is true.

This is the reason why my grandmother always used to keep a thin stream of COLD water running in a rarely-used sink during the winter months.

Spoke too soon!

[etherial.livejournal.com]

The moment you told me the temperature in the apartment when you got home, I thought "Phew! At least her pipes haven't frozen!"

PS - londo is dumb.

Re: Spoke too soon!

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I just think he didn't think through. Which could be a definition of dumb, I guess.