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

[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.