How many people will let their pipes drip tonight? (Bedford: renting, house)

[loves2read]

I wonder if pipes that normally would not freeze when temps are this cold for short time will be much more likely to freeze now that it has gone on for so long...

heard part of 5 pm news cast and mention was made of water temp in local lake--that I guess is water source--I thought it said when the lake temp got to 20--(so I am thinking that water is frozen and NOT moving) it mean that pipes were more likely to freeze...
I did not really get the connection--

but I am thinking that water that is in your pipes in your walls might have started out a lot warmer and now approaching the 4th day of under 30 temps the water moving through the pipes is getting colder and colder...

then I read a post on another forum from a plumber (I think) who said that pipes in an exterior wall get a temp that is half of the interior and exterior temps--
so 65 in a house and 20 outside--the wall temp would be 42 or so--still above freezing
but don't know that is always right--because some people are getting frozen pipes that affect the interior of their house...

(excuse the misspelling of attic--can't correct that apparently)

[Lakewooder]

I'm doing it but I bet some of my tenants won't despite my warnings...then they will really start howling if a pipe bursts -- and boy when they find out they may be without water for several days.. uh - oh!

[caroldixit]

I am letting both my hot & cold water faucets drip - all the faucets in my house !

Had a bad scare yesterday - my kitchen faucet has only one long handle for both hot & cold. Had kept it on hot & dripping but come morning, my cold water stopped coming out of the spout. The problem mysteriously resolved by itself in about 12 hours - keeping my fingers crossed hoping there is no pipe burst somewhere in some interior wall.

[loves2read]

we are letting couple of them drip--one a rainshower head in master bath shower which obviously has pipeing in the attic and another ground floor sink on exterior wall--
but my husband said that the second floor bathroom with has a wall with pipes bordering the attic did not need to be dripping...

our son who is renting our former home in Bedford is supposed to be letting faucets drip as well

[ItsDarts]

I answered #2 but I could have picked #3 as well. My hot water heater is in the garage and my Kitchen Sink is as far from the hot water tank as it can be, the diagonal opposite end of the house. Oddly enough, its the hot water in my kitchen sink that isn't working since the cold weather hit. Cold is running fine. All the pipes run in the attic. The kitchen sink is on the north wall of the house. I tried placing a fan under the sink and even turned the oven on and opened the door to pump warm air under the sink, to no avail. I'm hoping nothing bursts, especially while I'm at work 30 miles away.

[lh_newbie]

We are not. The only external wall we have with water pipes in them is in our kitchen. We remodeled our kitchen last year. When we did so, I pulled the drywall completely, removed the old (crappy, poorly installed) insulation out of the wall and installed better insulation, ensuring to properly pack it behind all pipes and to ensure no gaps anywhere. So I am not worried about our pipes freezing at all.

Poorly insulated walls are the big cause of frozen pipes. Even a half inch of space that isn't insulated that has a pipe in it can cause a pipe to freeze, and the attention to detail when insulating walls in DFW is certainly NOT a strong point here - especially in 2-story homes, no one seems to insulate between floors around the perimeter.

Brian

[DaveG99]

I have never let a faucet drip in my life ever.

[loves2read]

we had an "energy rater" check out this house we bought two years ago--and there is insulation between the second and first floor--but it was not installed as well as it should have been
in the gameroom upstairs which sits partially over the patio on ground floor (so roof of patio is under gameroom--some of the fiberglass batts were falling down--not staying up in the cavity...
the energy rater inspector said that the builder should have run netting across the batts after they were installed to keep them flush with the floor framing...
no water lines in that particular area but I am sure there could be problems with misfitting insulation in other places

we have had problem in master shower since Wed--only partial flow to any of the three shower heads--at least one of them has to have piping in attic and we know there was freeze problem the first winter the original owners were in house--plumbers who did the install came out, found the blockage and thawed it--and added more insulation in attic

then when we bought the house the mixer cartridge in the master valve in that shower got stuck and had to be replaced--took almost a month to get the part from Moen--
and it acted like this

so we don't know if we have a blocked water line from freeze or from bad valve/cartridge
have service warrenty for the house but the plumber and the warrenty company say that they don't have to come out until Monday--plumbers were closed Wed--talked to them Thursday and they would not schedule repair until after temps came up and our situatuion did not qualify for Saturday (overtime/emergency only) repair call...

[TXboomerang]

Both hot and cold froze in our master bath, I was able to unthaw the cold lines in a couple of hours, the hot line took about 10 hours. I read on a plumbing website that the hot water lines will usually freeze easier than the cold water lines because minerals are lost in the hot water heater that allow the water to freeze easier.

[mitotex]

We've got dual sinks in my kids bathroom against an outside wall, and only the hot water in one sink was working yesterday. We ran that for a while & was able to get the cold to run after a bit. For the other sink we left the vanity open and heated up the room. Got the hot water to run, then ran that again. The cold water finally ran, but now for some reason the faucet valve won't shut off. Had to shut that off that one at the valve under the sink. Now I have all the sinks against outside walls dripping.

Funny thing is that I've lived in Michigan for close to 40 years and never had a pipe freeze there - and never had to drip any of them.