# How to go broke protecting your pipes from freezing



## Eyes Wide Open (Oct 14, 2010)

Believe me, you don't have to convince me that keeping pipes from freezing is a very worthwhile effort. I know that burst pipes cost a fortune and cause major damage, not to mention making it very difficult to get by while you get the whole thing solved.

In fact, that is why I was looking around at articles online about this topic. This is the first one I found, and I was shocked.

http://www.rmiia.org/Homeowners/Cold_Weather_Frozen_Pipes.asp

Highlights:

"Keep the house heated to a minimum of 65 degrees. The temperature inside the walls - where the pipes are located - is substantially colder than the walls themselves. A temperature lower than 65 degrees will not keep the inside walls from freezing."

And, in the "Protecting Your Home While You're Away" section:
"Keep the temperature at the minimum of 65 degrees."

Whoa!!!! By that logic, when we leave on vacation, we should crank it up rather than lowering our thermostat like everyone else. I realize the space between the walls is colder than the living space in winter, but that's quite a number of assumptions going on here. 

What temperature is it outside? If the low temperature outside is 55F and you leave on vacation, do you really want to heat your house? How are your pipes going to freeze in 55 degree weather? 

Are your pipes REALLY 30 degrees colder than your living area? Might be the case for some people - maybe your pipes are going through an exterior wall. That would be too bad. Our pipes are all in interior walls. Big difference.

What type of home do you have? If you live in a trailer, I could see needing to stay on the safer side. If you live in an apartment next to two other occupied apartments, that's a vastly different situation. 

To me, keeping your house heated at a minimum of 65F seems more like the worst case scenario rather than a reasonable rule of thumb. For the record, we heat our house to 62F during the day (when we're THERE - not on vacation!), 55F at night. Never had the slightest problem. Also, to say across the board that temperatures below 65F "will not" keep your inside walls from freezing is just bunk. Even saying "may not" is a stretch. Our house is definitive proof that temperatures below 65F "absolutely do" keep our inside walls from freezing. 

"Turn on hot and cold faucets enough to let them drip slowly. Keeping water moving within pipes will prevent freezing."

Ok, we're supposed to do that even while we have the heat at a "minimum" of 65F? Seriously? This is good advice if your heat goes out on a cold night; depending on various factors you might choose to drip your water rather than draining your pipes. In other words, this is an emergency measure. But this article has no such qualifiers - I guess we're supposed to do this as a matter of course all winter? Or maybe even as long as the weather dips below that scary, freeze-inducing level of 65F? Lol, that would be 50 out of 52 weeks a year for me.

What a waste - a margin of 30 degrees _plus _dripping your water fulltime? Imagine if everyone lived that way?


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## Trisha in WA (Sep 28, 2005)

LOL It would be a boon to the economy for the power company and the water and sewer companies. 

We live in zone 4. We have temps that get down to 20-30 below zero. We are caretakers of a lodge that doesn't have guests ALL the time. So, when temps drop and we don't have any scheduled guests for a while, we just drain all the water and put RV antifreeze in the pea traps. No problem! And no need to keep the heat going.


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## Ohio dreamer (Apr 6, 2006)

We have boiler heat, so the cavity is warmer I guess due to the hot pipes running though them (mostly on outside walls as that's where the radiators are). I would roast if we kept the house at 65 degrees. Zone 5 here, gets below zero and stay for 7-10 days straight once or twice a year- never had a frozen pipe, yet. When we were living in Europe we still had this house and kept the heat here at 55 all winter for 3 winters...no frozen pipes.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

our house was fitted for plumbing in 1939 , i put in all new pipes in 2006 , not a one of them is in an external wall the closest to it is about a foot and it runs thru the floor into the kitchen cabinet from the basement i turn off the water and water heater when i go on vacation any way


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## HeelSpur (May 7, 2011)

Ever see a sewer line freeze up during a deep freeze because someone let their water drip.
It happens.


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

One size does not fit all.


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## Tammy1 (Aug 31, 2011)

Sewer line freeze up--it's happened to me! After that I never left water dripping again. I lived in an older moblie home at the time. About 5 years ago I final purchased a house and guess what happened the first year. The water pipes froze up and the sewer drain on the dishwasher froze up. I spend years worrying abour water pipes freezing in a moblie home and it never happened. Move to a house and then it happens, imagine my dumbfounded look when I was told my water lines were froze! Turns out the kitchen water lines are in the outside wall. During the fall I notice the cool air coming in from the over hang and added insulation to the area, which is what caused the freezing. I removed the insulation and they haven't froze since. We just deal with the cold air. The sewer is a little different. I have to remove the bottom cover on my dishwash every year otherwise the drain pipe freezes. I still worry about it on those cold January days and make sure all my equipment is ready incase it happens.


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## Mallory (Oct 27, 2011)

We kept our inside temp 55-60 last winter and had the pipes freeze all the time. Our pressure regulator froze and broke and so did our water heater (although that may have just been because the pressure regulator broke). There were nights I left the water running and things still froze up. There was even heat tape on the pipe that is outside. 

All of our pipes are in the east external wall, everything runs along that wall- washing machine, dishwasher, kitchen sink, tub, bathroom sink, and the tiolet is just around the nothern corner.

I don't know what we are going to do this year. Even though I keep hearing that you should heat your house more, we have decided not to get propane and run the furnace, so we will be using space heaters and the wood stove, which is on the opposite end of the house. We did rebuild the box that goes around where the pipe comes out of the ground and goes into the wall, reset the heating tape and then piled dirt up all around the box.

We should have know when we had to replace all the plumbing when we moved in that it was going to be a battle. Fortunately we used pex tubeing so we haven't had to replace it....


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## YuccaFlatsRanch (May 3, 2004)

I live in South Central Texas and we get just a few days each year when I have to worry about water pipes. Being mostly warm, with mostly rocky ground, we don't bury pipes very far and some are not buried at all. I have learned to install isolation valves and drain valves in the areas most likely to freeze and on the coldest nights I shut the valves and drain the water - no water - no freeze. My outside spigots also have a valve just below ground level where I can shut the valve and open the spigot. No pressure - no busted pipe.


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## Ozarks Tom (May 27, 2011)

I used to love broken pipes. I was in the wood flooring business in Dallas, and every year we'd get a couple good freezes - 20 degrees - and the uninsulated pipes running through all the new houses' attics would give us lots of business during what otherwise would be slow months.


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