They cause a lot of trouble. It was during this period that owners of private houses, and even residents of multi-apartment buildings, began to experience more frequent problems with their plumbing. This mainly happens due to a number of reasons, including low temperatures, insufficient insulation of pipes, their deepening, or low water flow.
In most cases, pipes begin to freeze in the area where they protrude from the ground to the surface. In order to find the area of the plastic pipe that requires heating, you need to bend it slightly. If there is an ice plug in this place, a slight cracking noise will be heard.
In order to heat the water supply directly at the entrance to the house, you can use available means. The easiest way to do this is with a hair dryer: a construction hair dryer or a regular household hair dryer; you can also use a fan heater.
Most often, it is very difficult to detect a freezing point, especially if the water supply is underground. A hairdryer won't help here. It has been used for this for a long time folk method. Using a welding machine connected to different ends of the pipe, you can quickly get rid of ice in metal pipes.
In order to warm up a plastic water pipe, welding machine use is strictly prohibited. Punching ice with wire is also not an option, because the size of the ice plug is unknown. If it is possible to break through the ice in this way, then of course you can, but if not, then you can use hot water. Water should be applied directly to the mash. This can be done in two ways: heat the water in the pipe or pour in already hot water.
It also happens that the water supply in the house freezes. To eliminate this situation, you need to stock up on a metal-plastic pipe or a rigid hose of a smaller diameter. Insert one end of the rescue device into the pipe until it stops (ice plug), and introduce hot water through the other. It is more effective to use strong brine instead of water. This is a very “labor-intensive” job.
During the heating process of the water supply, quite a lot of water will flow out; this should be taken into account and stocked with the necessary containers to collect it.
If the frozen pipe has bends, then it is inappropriate to use metal-plastic. You can use an oxygen hose, but you will have to tinker with it a lot. Due to its heavy weight, it can be pushed a maximum of 15 meters, and even this requires a lot of effort.
There are several options for warming frozen water pipes using homemade devices, the number of which increases every winter. Now on the Internet you can find many instructions for their manufacture, but not all of them are safe and effective. Most of these devices are designed to heat ground water supply. Underground, “warming up” pipes in this way will be much more difficult or even impossible.
In order to quickly and efficiently heat the water supply in winter, it is best to use steam generators or hydrodynamic units. These devices can be purchased at any specialized store, or you can build them yourself. Of course, a self-made design will be far from ideal, but it will work similarly. This method of restoring a watercourse is complex and dangerous. To construct the above mechanisms, certain skills and knowledge are required. The simplest analogue of a hydrological installation can be made using metal barrel, pump and oxygen hose.
All of the above methods of restoring water supply are relatively cheap, but, unfortunately, not always effective. Some of them require significant physical effort and special skills that the average person does not possess. Today, in order to quickly and efficiently heat the water supply, you can use the services of a specialist. You will have to spend money on the work of a master, but the result will not be long in coming.
The best way to warm up is to prevent freezing, as they say: the best medicine is prevention. In order not to suffer in winter, you just need to insulate the water pipes in warm time of the year. It's both easier and cheaper.
To prevent freezing underground, it is advisable to lay pipes at a depth of at least two meters.
This is often impossible to do, so experts recommend using special heating or the same thermal insulation. For prevention, it is also recommended to periodically inspect the water supply. If the system is old, it is best to replace it.
Here's another way to warm frozen pipes:
We bring to your attention another way to defrost pipes.
If you do not want to deal with defrosting the water supply yourself, then you should use the services of a plumber. Fortunately, now you can call plumbing for your home at any time, if only there was money.
When the water in the pipes freezes, it’s not so bad. But if the water breaks the pipes, then there will really be trouble. It’s not that the water will blow the pipes to pieces, but the fistulas on the pipes will not always be good clamp will help. Therefore, if the water in the pipes is frozen, you need to immediately call the housing office or another organization responsible for the operation of this network. True, the housing office is not Chip and Dale, and is usually not in a hurry to help, in the private sector there are no housing offices at all, and companies involved in defrosting pipes are not available everywhere, and then you yourself have to engage in an unequal battle with the elements. Although, of course, you can wait until spring and completely change the pipes, the reasons for freezing pipes still need to be dealt with and eliminated so that this costume ball occurs as rarely as possible.
First of all, the pipes are heated where there are metal parts: valves, adapters. Since metal conducts heat and cold much better, freezing of water in plastic pipes ah, in such places it is most likely. You should also warm up places where there is an obstacle to the flow of water or the flow speed drops: at turns, bends, pipe branches.
From the point of view of physics, everything here is quite simple: to make a phase transition of a certain amount of matter from a solid to a liquid state, you need to expend energy. And to put it in more understandable terms, to melt 1 kg of ice, you need to spend 79.4 KCalories or 334 KJoules or 92.8 Watt hours. All that remains is to choose how to transfer heat to the ice. Most often, pipes are heated from the outside, transferring heat to metal pipes.
The pipes are wrapped with rags or foam rubber and periodically poured with boiling water. Although this is the most affordable way, but it can only be used in the basement, sometimes in the entrance. If the pipe is frozen in the ground, then pouring boiling water on the ground is useless. Defrosting pipes in this way can take from 2 to 10 hours. If you can’t defrost the pipes this way, then you should think about another method.
The source of hot air can be a hair dryer of various types electric heaters with fans (so-called “blowers”) and without fans. This method has many disadvantages: firstly, plastic pipes must be heated very carefully so that the pipes do not melt, and secondly, low efficiency, since most of the heat is wasted for other purposes. Defrosting pipes in this way can take from 2 to 10 hours. If you can’t defrost the pipes this way, then you should think about another method.
Special wires are wound in a spiral on the pipe, which are used for the device heated floors, then the wires are connected to the electrical network. The disadvantage of this method is that such wires are usually sold in coils or sets and are not cheap, however, there are no simple and cheap ways to defrost pipes. It may take 1-3 hours to defrost the pipes this way. But main drawback The problem is that this method is not suitable for pipes laid underground.
In order to melt the ice plug in the pipe, hot water is used, but it needs to be somehow delivered to the ice plug or heated, for this you need a good entrance to the pipe.
Hot water can be forced into a pipe under pressure or something like a boiler can be made. These methods are enough, so I won’t repeat them. I will only add that it is possible to warm up pipes using these methods only on flat areas and this can take a lot of time - up to 2-3 days, but there are no other relatively simple and cheap ways to warm up plastic pipes in the ground yet. If all else fails, you will have to call a team with special equipment and they will arrange for you to hydrodynamically flush the pipes.
If water pipes in the ground are frozen, there is only one reason - the pipes are not laid at an insufficient depth, i.e. above the depth of soil freezing, which means that if the pipes are not laid deeper, the water in them will freeze every cold winter. You can determine the depth of soil freezing on the map . Main water pipelines large diameter, in which water flows constantly, can be laid at a shallower depth, and water pipes with a diameter of 20-32 mm are better to be laid below the freezing depth or, if this is not possible, a water supply heating system should be laid immediately along with the water supply.
If the water pipes periodically freeze, then to prevent the water in the pipes from stagnating and freezing, you need to turn on the water in the apartment at night, the higher the pressure, the less likely the water in the water supply will freeze, although the higher the bills from the water utility will be, but there is no choice here has to. And if you turn on the water with low pressure, the sewage system may freeze, but this is a slightly different topic.
The water supply system, as a rule, must be laid outside the freezing zone or insulated with special materials. But in practice, some sections of the pipeline remain unprotected from the effects of sub-zero temperatures, and with the arrival of cold weather, the water in them freezes. To decide how to warm up a frozen water supply, you can use one of several methods that are used in this situation.
If the water pipe is located in an open space, you can use hot water brought to a boil to defrost it. This applies to pipes located near the house, in the garage or indoors summer kitchen, which does not have a heating system.
If the section of pipe that needs to be heated is located in the thickness of the soil, then the heating work may take a long time. In this case, you either need to be patient or use another faster method.
If the above method does not work and the question is how to warm up a frozen water supply, then you can try to do this using construction hair dryer, distinguished by its power. If you don’t have one, you can use an ordinary hair dryer or fan heater, which is present in many homes.
When using this method, you need to take into account the material of the water pipe. If it is made of plastic, you need to monitor the temperature of the air that acts on the surface of the pipe. At high temperatures, the plastic can melt, so you need to work carefully.
The following methods are based on action electric current. With their help, you can melt ice in both metal and plastic water pipes.
To avoid a short circuit in the network, you need to ensure that unprotected parts of the wires do not touch.
If the water supply has a large number of turns, then to defrost it you can use homemade instrument, the design of which includes an Esmarch mug, a hydraulic level tube and wire.
If the situation is such that the frozen water supply cannot be thawed on our own, you can seek the help of a specialist. With the help of a hydrodynamic unit, he will be able to quickly cope with the problem. During the operation, boiling water will be supplied, which a short time defrost the water supply.
If you don’t want to waste time and effort on heating the water supply in winter, then it is better to make sure that water flows to the collection point all year round during the warm season.
This video describes how to defrost a water pipe with steam:
Plastic pipes in last years have become a very common material. Today they are used both when laying pipelines in apartments and when arranging risers and long highways.
Plastic pipes owe their popularity to a considerable number of advantages, among which it is worth noting:
Despite their good performance, plastic pipes can freeze just like any other. A pipeline that has stopped operating due to frost is always a serious problem that needs to be resolved promptly. This article will discuss how to heat water in a plastic pipe.
The main reason why water pipes located in the ground freeze is that the depth of the pipeline is too small. When installing pipes outdoors, you need to calculate their depth so that they are below the freezing level of the soil. If this condition is not met, then the pipes will freeze every year.
An exception to this rule is any large-diameter main water supply: in such systems, the movement of water is constant, so it cannot freeze. However, such pipes are usually used for laying industrial routes, and in private construction, pipes with a diameter of 20 to 32 mm are used, which must be laid at a greater depth.
In some cases, installing pipes at a sufficient depth is not possible. To avoid freezing, you will have to use active or passive insulation, which will protect the system from exposure to low temperatures.
If the pipeline freezes with noticeable regularity, then to prevent this factor it is worth leaving the system running even at night. Very important nuance– an increase in pressure in the system is inversely proportional to the probability of its freezing. The desire to save money, for the sake of which the pressure in the system is deliberately reduced, can also lead to its freezing, so you should avoid such situations.
If the water in a plastic pipe is frozen, you can warm it up in several ways:
If the pipe that needs to be heated is located underground, and the pipeline itself has turns or bends, then the methods described above for heating the structure will not help. In this case, it will not be possible to break through the ice plug with a wire, because the length of the frozen section of the pipe is unknown.
One of the methods suitable for solving this problem is a folk remedy: a welding machine is connected to the two ends of the pipe and started. There is one more effective method heating pipes, which consists of supplying hot water directly to an area where it cannot reach on its own.
The sequence of actions required to heat the pipe with hot water is as follows:
Before heating a plastic pipe, you need to thoroughly study the algorithm for performing this work, which includes several stages:
To prevent a defrosted pipe from freezing in the future, it is better to immediately take measures to insulate it - then in the future you will not have to think about how to warm up a pipe with water.
If water is frozen in plastic pipes located under a layer of soil or foundation, then to warm them you will need a barrel, a pump and an oxygen hose, using which you need to carry out the following steps:
Heating a plastic pipe can be done in other ways. For example, you can always use a hydrodynamic machine for these purposes. Its hose is inserted into the pipe, after which the device starts up. Ice in in this case will break under pressure.
A safer option for plastic pipes is a steam generator, which removes ice by turning it into a gaseous state. A pressure gauge and a valve designed for a pressure of 3 atm are attached to the thick-walled pipe of the device. When working with a steam generator, you must strictly follow the instructions to avoid possible troubles.
Conclusion
Questions like “a pipe frozen underground - what to do?” quite common among private home owners. Solving a problem with a frozen pipeline is not so difficult, but the task itself is quite troublesome and time-consuming. It would be much better to design the pipeline in advance so that the water in it does not freeze even in the coldest times.
Our winters are harsh and can bring an unpleasant surprise in the form of frozen pipes. In this case, not only is it lost drinking water, but also the opportunity to properly prepare food, keep the house and body clean. And this is a disaster for a person accustomed to comfort. In addition, if you have to dig up communications, it will take a lot of time and effort. In general, a frozen water supply has serious consequences. Most often this happens with metal pipes. Now they are being replaced by metal-plastic, which has proven itself to be a more frost-resistant material. But even such a water supply can freeze over at very low temperatures. Therefore, every owner should know what to do when the water in the pipes freezes in a private house - the solution to the problem is in the article.
The best solution to the problem of frozen pipes is proper installation and use insulating materials. As they say, it is easier to prevent problems than to desperately solve them later. Therefore, dig trenches at a level that will not freeze even in the harshest winter. But if you do not have this opportunity due to climate or soil conditions, then be sure to use materials for thermal insulation and protection from moisture. Moreover, this is true for both metal and plastic.
The photo shows frozen water in a plastic pipe
And yet, what to do if the water in the pipe has already frozen? There can be two options for water pipe icing: inside the house (indoors) or outside (outdoors). The first is less common, but it is also easier to fix the problem. The second case is more complicated, although fortunately it is also not hopeless.
In any case, there are some universal tips:
Now almost universally used metal-plastic pipes, so below are methods that are primarily suitable for them.
At first glance, the pipes in the house should not freeze. But in addition to residential premises, there are also those that are not heated (attic or basement). This is where problems arise. It is easier to deal with frozen pipes indoors due to more or less free access to them. Several available tools will help you do this.
It is much more difficult to correct a situation when communications are frozen on the street, underground. If the trenches are shallow, you can try to dig them out and warm the pipes using any of the methods described above. But this is still a last resort option. Firstly, digging frozen ground is a dubious pleasure, especially if the weather has not improved. Secondly, it is difficult to find the problem area the first time, so you have to dig out pipes along almost the entire length.
And this not only takes time and effort, but can also aggravate the situation when the temperature outside remains very low. In addition, metal-plastic pipes can simply be damaged with a shovel.
Now you know exactly how to defrost a water pipe in a private house.
