Frozen Pipes

[PotterWatch]

Got up this morning and the water in one bathroom isn't running. We think the pipes might be frozen. Here. In Southern California. Weird.

 

[sourland]

Never trust the weather. When my parents moved to Fla., the first thing my father did was "winterize" the house. Ten years later when a freeze hit the area, their's was the only house in the neighborhood that did not have frozen pipes. Hopefully you can get them defrosted without any bursting and resultant damage.

 

[annaraven]

Quote:
See if you can find where the frozen section is and use a hairdryer to help thaw it. Then get pipe-wrap for that area to avoid it freezing in the future.

 

[arabianequine]

We used a heater at the pump house and unthawed pretty fast. We set it up as close as we could and let it run it unthawed in about 30 min.

Also in this weather leave the water trickle a little in different parts of the house.

 

[arabianequine]

Speaking of frozen....not much though. I went to give the chickens water and water started then stopped. My husband already knew too because he moved the heater away from the pump sometime recently. They started right up in a few mins though.

I said leave it there now till winter is well over.

 

[PotterWatch]

My husband is up on the roof right now putting insulation on the pipes that were missing it. That's right, they are on the roof. My sill, who owned this house before us, needed to have it re-piped and went with the cheapest option which was putting the pipes on the roof. Our roof is almost flat so it works ok except that our water is steaming hot in the summer and frigid in the winter. Most of the pipes already had insulation (we did that when we moved in), but there was a section that needed some work not too long ago. The insulation was taken off and never replaced. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be any damage from the freeze last night. Hopefully the insulation on it now will prevent them from freezing tonight and in the future!

 

[zippitydooda]

Welcome to my yearly nightmare. Sigh.

 

[AngieChick]

We went through it last year when we had some single digit nights, which is unusual for our area. It seems that these extremes are becoming the norm, so my hubby and I have been discussing what we need to do to the house to better winterize it long term. Those of us that live in milder climates tend to become complacent until we get a little reminder now and then.

It seems like you are absolutely on the right track.

 

[Illia]

Hope all goes well. . . I know we had to have our pipes insulated and even torched last time we had a coldsnap. Power went out for a loong time, so the water stopped running, and the pipes froze over in the unusual 20 degree night. The next morning our neighbor spent 2 hours torching then insulating the exposed piping.

At least ours wasn't on the roof. Odd place to work on plumbing.

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

I heard you had freezing rain and snow in So Cal! How far down?? Just how unusual is it for you all to get temps below freezing??