it felt 17 when I walked 15 minuets to the bus stop this morning and waited another 15 minuets for the bus (wearing layered cloths and insulated boots) Monday December 19 forecast 47'38'
X100! Two weeks for a plumber is unacceptable in my book, but I'm sure you aren't the only one with this issue and with the holidays coming up he's probably inundated with service calls right now. If it's a simple ice plug, that thing could keep on getting larger until the pipes actually burst. I would also try thawing it (SLOWLY) ourselves.....if there is a bigger problem you still won't be worse off than you are now and you could buy time for that plumber to get there (you are on the waiting list, after all) and orchestrate a better prevention routine. Heat tapes and simple pipe insulation are invaluable. I wish you all the luck in the world!@wamtazlady Did you happen to have anything hooked up to the faucet? Anything connected that keeps the taps from draining will freeze your taps.
I have a Y connection I use so it's easier to fill pails (I have both a hot and cold tap) and even though it's open and can drain it won't and it'll freeze our frost free tap.
Can you heat the crawl space to unthaw the pipes? Two weeks is an awfully long time to be waiting on a plumber.
Here is the inside view of our frost free taps at our house
The soldered connection with a threaded female end so we can change the tap ourselves. (When we get the time)
Outside view of the taps. Ok don't laugh at the "farmer" fix on the gold tap, it's supposed to be changed...lol. The gold tap is the old style tap, the silver and blue tap is the new style.
In our office, (a 100+ year old house) the kitchen sink lines run through a crawl space. When we get really cold we open the doors under the sink and point a heater at the pipes. My hubby has also put a heater once to heat the crawl space when we had extended frigid weather and the pipes were freezing. We had one instance where the kitchen pipes froze. Once we got them thawed out, we left the tap dripping through the night until that cold spell broke. For us it depends whether the wind is blowing on that side of the house.
Hubby just came in and thinks you should have no trouble thawing out your pipes yourselves. When ours froze...he said it was close to -40C (-40F) He thinks a space heater should thaw them out. Heat tape like Blooie mentioned would be a really good idea as well if you can get in there. Hubby says to put the thermostat end where it will be the coldest (on the ground or at the footing) so it works well and doesn't shut off from heat.
