Frozen Pipes and Other Winter Events

1 February 2012
7:07 PM

Sunrise at	9:38 AM	in direction	131°	Southeast
Sunset at	4:32 PM	in direction	229°	Southwest

Duration of day: 6 hours, 54 minutes (6 minutes, 42 seconds longer than yesterday)

4:52 PM, 31 January 2012

In these parts, many people put ethylene glycol in their home's hot water heating system.  It is expensive to install; it reduces heat transfer by raising the boiling point; and is poisonous to animals if there is a leak.  But, it does keep hot water radiator pipes from freezing.  As I mentioned a few days ago, it was the 4th coldest January on record.  What I didn't mention was how brutally cold it was on Saturday. 

For example, when I was helping with Yukon Quest vet checks, we were indoors processing the paper work for examining the dogs.  Each time the garage doors opened so a truck filled with dogs could drive in or out, the ball point pen I was using would get cold enough that I couldn't write until the air around me had gotten a bit warmer.  I was wearing wool glove liners - inside!  It was -42F at our house, which meant it was even colder down in the river flats.  Friends told me it was colder than -53F below at their house that morning. 

We'd kept the fire in the wood stove going over the weekend; nothing unusual in that.  The top floor and living room radiator heat did not come on over the weekend because of the heat from the wood stove; nothing unusual in that.  Mom's apartment downstairs, the garage, and our bedroom did not benefit from the heat of the wood stove and the radiator was on more frequently in those zones; nothing unusual in that.  On Monday morning we filled up the stove, banked it, and then baffled it so it would last until noon; nothing unusual in that. 

We came home to a house that was 59F in the living room and upstairs loft area; okay, things are unusual.  I kept saying maybe we had frozen pipes.  We'd had a similar experience in Colorado when temperatures dropped to -20F and the pipes froze on the north side of the house.  We'd been told then to not use wood heat when it was cold, so we could keep the hot water circulating.  But I didn't see how that was possible here since they probably put glycol in the pipes, right?  My son-in-law thought it was zone valves.  We have five zones.  But I pointed out that the two zones not heating were those heated by wood, so hot water hadn't been flowing through them during the cold snap.  Still, to be sure we checked out everything we could - zone valves, transformer voltage, thermostats.  They all appeared to be working fine.

I thought about letting it go, waiting to see if the radiators would start delivery heat once the temperatures raised.  We still owe Rocky's Heating Service $204 from his last visit.  Surely it was just frozen pipes, but what if it wasn't?

We gave in a called the heating company, again.  $539 later Rocky, from Rocky's Heating Service, confirmed there was no trace of ethylene glycol in the radiator water and it was most likely that the pipes had frozen and needed to thaw.  Gary and Rocky spent several hours attempting to thaw the pipes in front of two atrium doors in the living room with hair dryers.  We know that those regions are not well insulated.  The only thing between the pipes and the outside is 8 inches of timber.  And too, I turned down the heat in the garage this year, and blocked drafts to the thermostat so the furnace would not be cycling as much to disperse heat along the radiate heated floor, so the ambient temperatures were cooler than it had been in previous years.

Between Rocky and Gary using the hair dryers and the fact that the temperature has raised 20 degrees since this morning, we now are getting radiator heat in the living room and loft area.  We are not using the wood stove tonight, just to be sure we keep heat flowing through the radiator pipes.  Our long term solution is to insulate around the outside walls between the floor boards and the garage ceiling.  I am not sure how to address the top floor.  We have sufficient insulation on the outside, and the warm air heated by the wood stove circulates so the rooms feel comfortable, but not enough to keep the exterior north wall above freezing.  The room is comfortable, but the wall has dropped to 32F.

When you consider that -42F is 70 degrees colder than the point at which water freezes, it's not so hard to see how this can happen.