welp, it was me.
The city water line goes through the well pit, and the temp in the well pit dropped early am, so we had a frozen pipe which thankfully did not leak. MR B reminds me that as often as not, a light bulb will provide adequate heat to prevent this, and he is spot on, we used to do that out at the house in cedar lake. Anyway, i have water with no other associated heartache, thank G-d.
We used to have a water line coming in that wasn’t deep enough, though it was city owned. During the winter we would go on winter water rates, and would have to keep a faucet running when it got real cold. If we would forget we would have to call the city, and they would come out and connect a huge diesel driven welder to the pipe for a little while to thaw things out. Glad to hear you got out of the dilemma without any other hassles.
It doesn’t freeze around here hard enough to do any damage, but a few years ago a heavily loaded semi crushed the inlet pipe to my place from the main on city property. After a week of no water, the city sent a crew who discovered the problem, called a contractor who shoved a plastic pipe underground about three feet below the original taking about an hour to do it, clean up and leave. The city boys connected and tested everythinng and departed after I made ’em a pot of coffee. There’s now a load limit sign at the city limits and at the turn offs into my little corner of paradise. Sometimes .gov agencies actually DO some good.
Gerry N.
You should, in today’s world, specify that I mentioned and INCANDESCENT bulb. LED’s and Twisty-bulbs won’t do it.
Usually, if the space is enclosed, a 60W bulb will do it. Cheaper, however, to run a self regulating heat tape with a plug in thermostat which will shut off the heat tape around 33 F. (Amazon carries these)
YMMV
Thats what i put in. But it needs some help, its froze agaon.
A trickle of water and a light bulb… And just pay the bill.
Second old nfo. That keep one running for years out on the farm.
Yeah, used the space heater to get it flowing and have the bulb running now.
When it was going to get COLD I thought about putting a 60w bulb in the Jeep’s engine compartment, but the thought never went any further than that. Fortunately it started just fine.
Maybe one of these years I’ll actually put in a block heater…probably a few weeks before I move to Arizona. *whimper*
Insulating the pipe will slow the heat losses. Combined with a little water flow should prevent freezing, even if it gets really cold or the bulb burns out.
Or you could get something from Raychem’s heat trace catalog? Just make sure you use ground fault protection on the circuit.