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Practical knowledge

Iamme

Philosopher
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Aug 5, 2003
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For all you people that live where it can freeze in the winter. Here is a question that I have for you (I already have the answer due to my knowledge in this field):

You wake up one cold blustery morning and you go to turn on your water. Only drips come out of the faucet! Hmmmmm. What is the problem? Are your pipes frozen? Or, could it be that your well (or the city well/water system) went down? If you can answer how you can tell the difference, without asking anybody, it could save you from going outside...crawling under a crawl space, or whatever. Hint: There are different things you could check that could cause you to take a reasonable guess. But the answer I am looking for is easy and conclusive.
 
Tap the pipe or faucet - it sounds "different" somehow if it is frozen?

The hot water should still run (for a bit) if the pipe is frozen, but not if the water is off.

I dunno! I live where the pipes never freeze...
 
Zep---Too complicated. Your method would require trying to find the actual frozen spot. Nope. My way is more conclusive and quicker.
 
Zep said:
The hot water should still run (for a bit) if the pipe is frozen, but not if the water is off.

I dunno! I live where the pipes never freeze...
Click to expand...

Never had my pipes freeze, but the hot water idea sounds reasonable.
 
I probably should make this more clear: What I am looking for is for a first test...for you to determine if the water froze somewhere (ANYWHERE), or if your well (if you have one) or the city system shut down somewhere. THAT's the question.

IF you determine that the water is frozen...that will require more work on your part as to determine where, or whose fault it is. Don't worry about this part for now. Only solve my first paragraph.
 
Try pipe warmers. They sell them in most hardware stores these days. If you apply them where the pipes first enter the house (e.g. as in my case through a built-in garage) then you can melt the water at this point and prove that it became frozen outside the house. In addition the temperature of the house and areas where the pipe's enter the house could tip you as to whether it froze outside or inside. If the pipe warmers work and water flows then it is not a shut down but a freeze up. If you still dont have water then you have to think it was a shut down.

I can walk over the ice to NJ from where I live last winter and had this problem. The pipe warmers worked wonderfully.
 
BTOx---There are variables with the hot water solution which is unnecessarily complicated for the *first* test.

Steve---Don't presume the water is froze first. Why waste your time thawing pipes if that isn't the cause of why your water no longer comes out fast.. but drips instead. There can be other causes of this.
 
On one of the coldest days last winter I had this problem. My first action was to call the Water Department, well in NYC, the DEP, and they came out. They opened the fire hydrant in front of my house and the water flowed fine so they said their large pipes werent frozen or interrupted. The other possibiliies were a leak or the smaller pipes entering the house were frozen. No leak could be visibly determined so we wrapped the small pipes entering the house in a thermostatically controlled pipe warming coil (it kicks in at 40 F or below) and the water started flowing again.
 
Hi Steve...again. But with my test, you would have been able to find out even if you HAD to call your water department or not. Unless, of course no water at ALL came out. That becomes trickier to determine where it is, or if pipes are frozen in various places. Good tip about the pipe wrap though.
 
I just want to warn people about some web sites on the pipe warming wrap I found. They are way too expensive. I found the unit I use in a local hardware store. It wraps 16 feet of the small pipe downstream of the water meter and
with themrostat and a fully wired regular electrical plug it cost forty bucks. I saw some recommendations for hundreds of feet of pipe wrap running up to a thousand dollars. I did not, at least, find such an elaborate solution as necessary.

Some try and scare you and talk about boiling the water in the pipe and it cracking. The unit I found heats it to 40 F+ so it will hardly boil but it wont freeze either.
 
Iamme said:
There are different things you could check that could cause you to take a reasonable guess. But the answer I am looking for is easy and conclusive.
Click to expand...

Check the temperature of the drips? If that's what you're getting at, I'm not sure it would be reliable. There's plenty of time for water to warm up between the blockage and the faucet. If not, please disregard. :)

Jeremy
 
Open the faucet. It drips. Hold your finger over it to block it. If you, after a short while, feel pressure building up under your finger, the pipes are frozen, if not, you need an additional test:

It is posible that part of the system is frozen solid and the dripping is just residual water coming out. So the next test is to put your mouth to the fauset and try to suck out water. If you can, the pipes are clear and the water pressure is gont, if you quicly build up wacuum and cant suck out water, the pipes are frozen.

Finally, if the pipes are frozen, but there is a dripping passage, you won't need to go thawing, simply let it drip. The water coming in from the ground pipes is several degrees over the freezing point and will soon widen the passage.

Hans
 
Iamme said:
For all you people that live where it can freeze in the winter.
Click to expand...

That's me.

You wake up one cold blustery morning and you go to turn on your water. Only drips come out of the faucet! Hmmmmm. What is the problem? Are your pipes frozen? Or, could it be that your well (or the city well/water system) went down?
Click to expand...

My apartment block's water system is down.

Around here we build the pipes so that they don't freeze.
 
Matabiri said:


If your lips stick to the tap, it's frozen?
Click to expand...

I suppose that this is related to the first thing you'd check - make sure that the temperature outside is actually below freezing point ?
 
MRC_Hans---You are the grand prize winner of the Thanksgiving Day turkey. Congradulations. You got it correct. How did you know that? Who would think that if the pipes are ALMOST completely frozen, that not only would it drip, but the dripping would have the power to blow your finger off the faucet spout or spigot? It takes about 20 PSI for the water presure to be able to push your thumb off the spout, for an average strength person.

If, you were able to hold back the dripping with your thumb...meaning you had less than 20 Psi, which is less pressure than what the city or a well would be run at (in fact, code has it that water presure must be above 20 PSI to keep coliform bacteria out of the water supply lines)then that would mean that there is either a broken water line somewhere, or the pressure tank (yours or the cities) is not up to pressure, due perhaps to a well shut down.

Nice tip on determining if the frozen water is near the faucet, or farther away. I have never had the need to try that.

Here is something else you might want to take a stab at, regarding water:

You have a water system that has a great big 5,000 gallon pressure tank. You are running 60PSI max, and about 40 PSI low. If you open a 2 inch "blow-off" gate valve on the pressure tank, and tried to measure the water volume per minute, you might have somwething about 500 GPM (I conducted such a test but it's very difficult trying to measure this kind of flow rate...but it was at least 300+ GPM's.) Okay...with that as a given, and I am telling you that the entire water system has 2 inch under ground piping....What do you think the GPM coming out of that 2 inch water pipe will be through a gate valve (these open the full 2 inches...no restriction) 1 1/2 miles away, at ground level (elevatrion is about 8 to 10 feet LOWER than the bottom of the pressure tank.)? Take a wild guess. I'll spot any takers here about 25 GPM's as to what the correct answer is.

How do I know such stuff? I used to be a water operator once, for a small island community water system.
 
lamme,

Without more information I don't think the GPM a mile and a half away can be accurately determined without direct measurement.

I would think the age and type of piping material, along with the type and amount of maintenance, would have to be known.

I would think the inside diameter of the piping gets smaller with age, due to the actions of corosion and sediment accumulation.

I'll give a guess though. About 80 GPM.
 
Sorry BobK. You are right in the fact that I neglected to provide more critical information. I can't say for sure how many GPM's were at the source. I feel it is around 500. The piping is all PCV, which offers the least resistance. There also are no bends in the water line. It's all a straight run. Due to repairs made along the entire system, I can affirm that the 2 inch I.D. remained at about 2 inches. Only a very thin brown slimey film was on the walls of the pipe. Clorination and weekly 'blow-offs' helped to keep it clean inside.

That said...your 80 guess was reasonable, but you weren't within my 25 GPM grace amount.
 
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