During the winter we tend to get frozen water lines more than we care too. Temp usually has to be in the single digits or lower when it happens...regardless it shouldn't happen at all. I believe it's happening after the lines come into the cabin as we have a heat tape on the line that comes out of the ground into the floor. From there the lines run inside the walls (I belielve this is where we're getting into trouble) to the various outlets. I'm thinking of trying to string a another heat tape of some sort and wondered if there are any suggestions out there for a good one or other idea completely.
Do you go to your place a lot in the winter? Do you have a crawl space or a full basement? We use to close up our place in the winter, drain the pipes, the tanks and toilets but than decided to keep it open all winter and just turn the heat down. We now find ourselves using it a lot in the winter. We are fortunate that it isn't too far to drive.
It sounds like your pipe heat wrap idea should work. A neighbor of ours was having problems and he had heat tape on the outside also - what he found was it was freezing just below the tape on the outside above the frost level. It was newer construction and the backfil to the house wasn't done properly leaving airpockets (clay soil conditions). He dug it out and back filled with sand and hasn't had a problem. Good luck
We just opened our cabin last weekend. We turned on the water and the pressure wasn't quite right. A quick check in the crawl space and we discovered one of the water lines had ruptured. We repaired the broken copper line and everything is fine. I think we will be blowing our water lines out now when we close. It could have been disasterous.
KariCabin4
We keep our cabin open year round and had a frozen septic system one cold winter. There had been little snow cover over the septic field and that was the main reason it froze. We were able to get it unfroze by running hair dryers in the clean out pipes for a day. We now cover our septic field with leaves and straw in the fall and we shut our water off and our pump off when we leave afer each visit.
Hello , I do a lot of rustic building and own a camp that my dad and myself built year ago .We have been on our lake for 5 generations .Any ways a few common practices to avoid breaks from freezing pipes are :
when installing your water system always pitch your piping to a general area with a shutoff such as a ball valve so most of the water will drain out of your system
when winterizing your water system .drain water ,by gravity feed or you can use an air compressor to blow water out of the system .
I have to quick disconnect where cold and hot water feeds the water heater .I can remove these and can add a small rv water pump to these fitting to pump rv anti freeze through the system .As pump builds up pressure it automatically will shut off ,I open faucets and the pump will push all water out and when I see antifreeze start to pump out of the faucet I turn it off trapping antifreeze in the system .
This takes about 10 minutes to winterize our water sytsem.
Also the drain for the hot water heater is permanetly plumbed to the out side .so all i have to do is open hot water drain valve and water is drained outside.
On our water (shallow) pump in i have installed a drain valve on the bottom of the pump .Pipes are pitched down to water pump .As I open valve (along with a main in line valve)on water pump all water drains from pump protecting it against freeze damage .
We are in the Adirondacks where temperatures can plunge to negative -30 degrees .Our pipes stay protected from the elements .
I think that's a great way to see things on that frozen pipe problem. Changing it to a RV Hot Water Heater would be a good way for your RV to be still running good and well. I hope that things would be considered in this one.