Slow drip to prevent freezing...

So it's cold as heck here in Florida this morning. Been below freezing for about the last 10 hours, and supposed to stay there for another 3 hours. Was all the way down to 23 degrees! And I'm in central florida, wowser this is cold. I'm originally from northern Illinois, so not a big deal, but it kinda is when they do not use frost free exterior water valves, and only a/c heating systems. Yes I said a/c heating systems. They are heat pumps that reverse the cooling cycle to heat the inside of the house and cool the outside. And they produce zero heat at all under about 20 degrees. Yes they work even in the 30's but not very efficiently.

Anyways, I dripped the water on the outside spigots here and they were fine and flowing water.

Slow drip prevented freezing - YouTube

54vSPdZsuW0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54vSPdZsuW0

There's one spigot I missed and she was frozen solid. I put a heat gun on it, and it's now flowing fine, so we're good. All except for having to heat the house now with a space heater as it's still in the 20's.

If that spigot froze, make sure and check the piping behind the shutoff knob. A standard hose hookup actually shuts the water off about 8-16 inches in from the piece on outside of house. The pipe just behind the control knob will split, only way to know is, very careful inspection or it will flood house when turned on.

Don’t see many ( meaning zero) quarter valves on external faucets up here;) but being from northern ILL you know that.

Dang you need to move South! :Rofl

Exactly, that is why I mentioned the freeze proof style spigot. That being said, if the spigot is not installed correctly to allow it to drain after being shutoff, or someone leaves a hose connected, or it leaks a little it will freeze and split the pipe inside the wall or in the basement, crawl space or under trailer and flood.

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Originally Posted by Bassing_53

If that spigot froze, make sure and check the piping behind the shutoff knob. A standard hose hookup actually shuts the water off about 8-16 inches in from the piece on outside of house. The pipe just behind the control knob will split, only way to know is, very careful inspection or it will flood house when turned on.

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These valves here in Florida are completely outside. They are not those frost free ones that shut off inside, although based on the current weather, they should be, then I would not have to drip the waters.

Central Minn, when it ain't freezing I love these valves, quarter turn and they are all the way open. love it

And yep keef, I just told wifey we need to move to the keys!

At one time in my childhood we had the electric heat pump system in our house. Thank goodness we also had two wood heaters, or we’d have frozen! Not a fan ;)
Our outside faucets, we just cover with the little styrofoam bonnets and have always gotten by. Been single digits here several nights lately, zero or below one night.


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Heat Pumps are a bill of goods sold to everyone south. There is no such thing as a Unit of Cold, only a Unit of Heat. The absence of a Unit of Heat it's Cold. So a Heat Pump relies on the work heat added to the refrigerant to warm the home. Instead of the freshly added heat into the compressed gas being discharged thru the coil outside the house it is reversed to the Evaporator coil inside to be discharged there. So it is sold to us that when the refrigerant returns to the Condensing unit it is supposed to absorb units of Heat from the outside air as the Condenser Fan is running but guess what the Condenser units freeze up because there is little units of ambient heat out side to absorb thru the condenser coil. So Electric Heating Elements are added to boost the systems ability to heat the home. This also comes at the price of reduced life of the complete Condensing skid due to running year around. Well this Engineer plays the game differently. I only install straight cool systems in my home and shop. Heating with lower efficiency Heat Strips but not running my Condenser Skid extends my Condenser Skid life over double. I have posted elsewhere on the Forum doing the PM to the skid to extend it's life replacing the Hard Start kits, contactors, and fan motors before a failure stressing the Compressor windings. My way works, I get well over 20 years of service life out of the Compressor, Condenser coil, and cabinet. Amortize that over the life of the equipment and you come out way ahead cost wise. We supplement the system with a Propane Fireplace with a Forced Fan which blows almost at 100% efficiency. The heat strips are cycling right now but it's 18-20 degrees outside but their not cycling much. Just a Rant, but it's true.

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Originally Posted by J White

At one time in my childhood we had the electric heat pump system in our house. Thank goodness we also had two wood heaters, or we’d have frozen! Not a fan ;)
Our outside faucets, we just cover with the little styrofoam bonnets and have always gotten by. Been single digits here several nights lately, zero or below one night.


Sent from my iPhone using Crappie.com

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There was no such thing as a heat pump in my childhood .... we had one big Dearborn propane heater in the living room (or in a couple houses we had a fireplace) and a small propane heater in the bath room .... then lots of blankets in the bedrooms!

I grew up out west, mostly in the high and low desert in So. Cal., depending which Marine Base Dad was Stationed at. I seem to recall a Gas wall heater, non-forced air, in the wall between the living room and the hallway. 3 bedroom houses. Heated the whole house. Forced air heater here, and still need space heaters...BRRR! Is it Spring yet???

All we been doing for while in Texas lately , is trying to keep warm …..
I think I beat old man winter so far , but it’s been busy staying ahead of him.
Some of the stuff last weekend was pretty hardcore for this part of the world.
Single digits a few nights and 20 ish daytime temps are not something we plan on …
Hopefully nobody suffers much from all this ….
About to go west to check up on some other places we hang around
One of them was left on a slow drip for sure …:highfive

You should have electric strips on your heat pump that you can put on with a setting. In fact as new as yours is they should come on automatically. Mine do and I can set them to stay on while the heater is running. Prepare for a higher electric bill if you do.

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Originally Posted by "D"

You should have electric strips on your heat pump that you can put on with a setting. In fact as new as yours is they should come on automatically. Mine do and I can set them to stay on while the heater is running. Prepare for a higher electric bill if you do.

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I respectfully add that is assuming the installer installed a 2 stage heating thermostat. Around here if you let these guys install a heat pump they a likely to not ever put heat strips in the air handler or worse install them with a single stage thermostat. 90% is about you can count on, makes a Man do his own work a lot.

the past 3 weeks its been negative temps here in Iowa. this week its the warmest with high of 34. I'm ready for warm weather!

In Central MS suburbia HOA land, the newer houses here have gas furnaces as part of the HVAC system, although my bonus room has its own Mitsubishi minisplit HVAC, which is heat pump-based. My wife’s cousin was here during some of our coldest days and slept in the bonus room, so the minisplit was apparently working. The older houses in my neighborhood started building in the mid-2000’s, and some have tank water heaters, while newer houses like mine have tankless water heaters. We also have manablok water distribution and valves inside the house, so that I can turn off the outside faucets when it gets cold—out of habit, I still cover them to remind me that I did turn the faucet off. I do end up dripping the inside vanity faucets that are along an outside wall on the hot water side to keep the water in both tankless heaters from freezing—I did have the one on the west wall freeze and didn’t free up until late in the afternoon the next day or so when it did warm above the freezing point and enough afternoon sun hits it. The east side didn’t freeze because of constant use from kitchen and guest bathroom, and we just took showers in the two bedrooms and bonus room on that side while waiting on the west side to thaw.

Since I'm not a licensed plumber I don't have a gas furnace. My FIL had one with a spark plug and injector, it's only byproduct was water. 100% efficient. Since I install my own equipment and my cost are very low I don't think the money would work out any better for us. Still a high efficiency gas furnace would be Uptown!

I forgot to mention that the only issue that I have with my gas furnaces is that it dries the air out too well, so I have to run humidifiers in the bedrooms as well as a larger room humidifier in the living room to keep us from coughing all the time and turning into prunes with cracked skin and nosebleeds. There's only so much we can do with drinking water and using good lotions and creams for the skin and ointment for the noses.

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Originally Posted by jjue1979

I forgot to mention that the only issue that I have with my gas furnaces is that it dries the air out too well, so I have to run humidifiers in the bedrooms as well as a larger room humidifier in the living room to keep us from coughing all the time and turning into prunes with cracked skin and nosebleeds. There's only so much we can do with drinking water and using good lotions and creams for the skin and ointment for the noses.

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Yup, our humidifier is running nonstop and we’re still drying out. Lotions, creams and some sore throats…:banghead

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Originally Posted by jjue1979

I forgot to mention that the only issue that I have with my gas furnaces is that it dries the air out too well, so I have to run humidifiers in the bedrooms as well as a larger room humidifier in the living room to keep us from coughing all the time and turning into prunes with cracked skin and nosebleeds. There's only so much we can do with drinking water and using good lotions and creams for the skin and ointment for the noses.

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When you live 14 miles from the Gulf of America a lack of humidity is a extremely rare problem.

Supposed to be 7 degrees tonight. Guess I’ll leave a slow drip on the faucets.

We will have the warmest night tonight that we've had in two weeks. it's supposed to be down to 23* and feel like 2*. We will see...

Stupid me ….. and there she blows ….. my drip on my faucet on the well is located right before my secondary outlet….whoops my bad :banghead

A lot of us aren't use to these extremely cold temperatures; if this keeps up, we will all need to do more maintenance and upgrades to make our winter prep easier.

I found that pool noodles make great pipe insulators. I try to buy them at the end of season for less than $1.00 a piece. Living in a mobile home isn't the best, but between a couple heat strips, pool noodles and the skirting between the trailer and ground I only drip faucets on extremely cold times. Knock on hard wood no broken pipes yet. Oh yea, they are all PEX pipes too. Like continuous PVC pipe.

I purchased Freeze Miser Outdoor Faucet freeze protectors
They haven’t arrived due to cold snap nation wide. They supposedly allow water to flow a little when faucet is about to freeze solid. Look on UTube. Freeze Miser

One's idea of cold varies with where they live. I'm a son of the south, and frozen pipes, icy roads and fridgid temps (low 20's and lower) are not welcome here. We aren't well prepared for that. Glad you made it thru OK Slab.

Faucents on drip here in central NC too. We've had no frozen pipes yet, in spite of low teen temperatures. It's been too cold for too long. The last time that snow hung around here for a week straight was in 2000 and I'd done my best to forget about that, until this week. This winter storms on consecutive weekends is getting old. Hurry up April!

Jim

Amen on April...And then the Rodent says six more weeks of winter! Well, If you look at the calendar, it is six weeks to the first day of Spring, but dagnabit, that furry big rodent don't need to remind us!!! Come-on warm weather, my bones ache!!!

It was single digit temps and 8" of snow when we left Southern Ohio on Saturday (1/31) to come to Florida, we arrived in central Florida on 2/01. Yep, it's pretty cool down here right now but it's way better than it is up there. We went out yesterday for a walk and although the constant wind made it a little chilly, it was good just to be able to get outside.
We have a heat pump back home, and it does decent down into the mid 20's but at that point our backup propane heat kicks in. I think it's a decent system.

I liked the temps a few years ago when everyone talked about global warming. I didn't feel so much of a need to move south but rather the south was moving to us.
Right now, it looks like we'll start seeing some warmer temps soon down here in Florida and I do sure to welcome them.

I think a slow drip is really and incorrect term, water will still freeze with a slow drip

Running a steady stream of water, not just a slow drip, is more effective at preventing frozen pipes during extreme cold. While a trickle helps, a continuous flow—such as a pencil-thin stream—keeps water moving through pipes, significantly reducing the risk of freezing, especially in vulnerable areas like exterior walls, attics, or garages. Plumbers recommend this approach when temperatures are below 20°F for three hours or more, or during power outages