That's the one benefit of this house being so old and sieve-like (very poorly insulated). The attic is currently 54º. But we've got very little plumbing in the attic since this is a pier and beam. Most of the plumbing is in the crawlspace which is normally fairly open. But I did work to mostly enclose the crawlspace. And because of the lack of insulation, lots of heat migrates out of the house through the floor, so the crawlspace is essentially heated by the house.

By next summer (and next winter) the bottom of the house and the plumbing there, will be insulated.

Yes it does. I'm about 80 miles due west of Steve, 16F at 4:00am this morning. No hot water. Took awhile to get it flowing again. It was fine at midnight.

Yikes, glad you got it going, Matt!

Me too. One corner of my garage, where the water heater is, gets colder than the rest. I had the same heat lamp on when the freeze of 2021 hit, but this time I didn't seal (vents) out the draft. 15 feet away, a jug of water didn't freeze.

Cold water was fine.

Mike, I’m not worried about any pipes on the inside of the house, but my house has a crawl space with all the plumbing underneath the house.. worst case for this type of event! My house is warm and im hoping as long as people are being active inside, ( using water, etc) that I’ll be ok. Running a faucet only helps that one section, not going to help the far away corners.

two years ago when we had an even worse freeze I was told to seal up the crawlspace as much as possible. I did that and didn't have any problem with freezing under the house. I also had two 500W work lights under the house for heat. Nothing under the house was insulated. I think that actually helped as heat from the house kept it warm under the house.

Its 8 outside and my crawl is 46. Have remote temp sensors there and in my greenhouse.

We are sitting a balmy 17 this morning in Baton Rouge. My house was built in 1837 and is off the ground. Pex, Insulation, dripping the pipes and making sure to flush the toilets every hour. Then hope for the best. We will be below freeing for about 70 hours. For you north of the Mason Dixon you say that's nothing. We aren't built for this depth of cold. Made sure the pool salinity was a bit high and running that pool pump for a solid 4 days. The damned water and power bill will be a ***** next month.

I'd considered moving one to under the house, but didn't want to crawl under there.

We were warmer this morning than yesterday (23º vs 15º), and today the high is probably going to be ~10º higher than yesterday. Since we survived Thu night, Fri, and last night and still have water, I think we're good to go for the next couple of days. We'll hit 40º today, 47º tomorrow, 57º Mon and should be back in the 70s by Wed.

Yes last time we had no power so it was worse.

But so far this year we are still having issues.

Plenty of neighbors with frozen pipes.

Gas supply is an issue. Low pressure which seems to be affecting tankless water heaters in large numbers. Pilot lights won't stay lit.

So far i've lost my backflow preventer. Lost it two years ago as well. At least this time it'll be an easy fix as I'm not dealing with 13 year old connections so should come apart without having to get medieval.

heat tape on the pipes in the attic
leave a faucet dripping in a couple of bathrooms
open the door to the attic
you'll be fine

Yes, losing power 2 years ago, was the death knell for many, many folks. Fortunately we haven't lost power, but I understand that there are folks around Texas (~100k) that don't have power. I'm not sure why or what the cause. ERCOT is showing plenty of capacity.

I heard that there were natural gas problems from someone yesterday. That sucks!

I'm sorry you are still having issues. Thank goodness the fix won't be too bad.

A buddy of mine works with an ex-coworker (they both left where we all used to work together and ended up at the same place). The ex-coworker (we were never buddies) does not heed warnings and advice. My buddy sent a pic yesterday that showed an outdoor spigot that had been turned into a fountain at the ex-coworkers house. It had a piece of the black pipe insulation on it. I don't think anyone around here relied on only a bit of pipe insulation to protect from freezing. I'm not sure how he fared 2 years ago. I would have thought he must have done more (or had problems).

Fortunately, our pipes have been OK through this. We had 1 break 2 years ago, and I made a few changes to prevent that from happening again (hot-wire and insulation in the pump house). I renewed all of the outside hose bibs insulation and wrapping/protection. If we had lost power/heat we may have had issues anyway. This year, I'll be doing more work on the house as a whole to protect even more in the future.

I was on the phone with my sister this morning wishing her a Merry Christmas and she noticed that she wasn't getting any water through her hot water side of any of the faucets in her house but she was getting cold water. She lives in the Florida panhandle and had been having freezing temperatures over the past few days like I have had here in Alabama. So anyway, she is on a slab and her pipes go up into the attic. She told me that she didn't use any hot water at all yesterday and so I came to the conclusion that the water in the lines between the water heater and the faucets had cooled and had frozen since no water was being moved through the pipes at all over a day and a night of freezing temperatures. The reason the cold didn't freeze was because she had used the cold side by flushing a toilet or rinsing things in the sink and that the cold water had been moving throughout the day. She opened up all of the hot water sides in every faucet and in about an hour she finally had hot water flowing again. She is going to have someone insulate the pipes in the attic and also get an insulated blanket thing for her water heater as it is located in her garage. I suggested to her that she needed to use her hot water more often and to let it drip a little overnight since the temperature will be below freezing again tonight.
Oh and this is new construction by the way, her house is less than a year old. I think the builder should insulate the pipes in her attic at no charge.

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I have "instant hot".

Continuous circulation of the hot water side.

It's awesome to be able to turn on the shower and just step right in. I'll never have a home without it ever again.

During Icemageddon we noticed a pattern. The homes in my subdivision that had it had no frozen pipe issues, it was only the homes without it.

Our conclusion was since hot / cold side plumping for the most part runs in parallel the ambient from the hot side inside the walls kept things warm enough to protect the cold water pipes.

Can be retrofit to existing systems pretty cheaply.

The one I installed in my vacation home is specifically to keep the pipes from freezing. It pumps the warm water into the cold line through a check valve (under the sink at the farthest point from the water heater) and it back flows back to the water heater so there is no water wasted and the water in the cold line is not only moving (whenever the pump comes on for the hot water), but it heated to about room temp. I have it set up so I can turn the hot water heater and the recirculation pump on from my phone when enroute or when the temp drops below about 25F.

Under real-world circumstances water needs to get to below 0 to freeze. It doesn't make sense that, under the same ambient conditions, 40 degree water would get to below 0 faster than 20 degree water.

It doesn’t.

It can.

It's not just ambient conditions.

Hot water is different than cold water.

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_water.html#:~:text=detailed%20explanations%20R eferences-,Yes%20—%20a%20general%20explanation,it%20is%20in% 20fact%20real.

Thanks, I'm going to have to look into this. My house is on a slab also but I have never had an issue with pipes freezing probably because our house is well insulated and wirh a wife and two kids, our water gets used quite a bit. My sister and niece are the only people at my sister's house so the water usage is less meaning less flow. I'm going to tell her about continuous circulation for her hot water.

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This is the system I installed:

https://readytemp.com/prevent-frozen-water-pipes/prevent-frozen-pipes.htm

Hopefully you fared ok. We left every faucet and showers dripping (hot and cold where possible) and have had no problems so far. Got down to 7 degrees yesterday morning. Apparently just keeping the water moving will reduce the risk of freezing. Going down to about 18 tonight in Atl then we should be in the clear.

My mother in law lives in an assisted living facility in town . It was built maybe 5-6 years ago . All plumbing runs in the attic space . Yesterday the pipes froze then burst ☹️ . Fortunately the staff were able to shut water off quickly so minimal damage.

They were able to get a plumber there quickly and make repairs so they had water this morning . I can't imagine the rate for an emergency call on Christmas Eve 🙄

My main comes up in a part of my attached garage and used to freeze the lines going in to the house through a soffit that was like a wind tunnel. The lines would freeze when the temp went down to 15. I heat traced all the lines in the garage and insulated them as well. Haven't had a problem since. Neighbors are not so lucky.

Does it vs Can it. Does it, all or most of the time? No. Can it under the right circumstances? Maybe.

We are talking about water in pipes, so no.

And hot water lines become cold water lines if you don’t run the hot water out one end.

Yep, this is why my sister has issues with her hot water lines freezing, she didn't use the hot water enough or at all for a day. I don't know how, but that is what she told me.
Checked with her today and she said the only issue she was having today was that the toilet in her master bath wasn't filling up again just like yesterday morning but that all faucets in her house were working as they should. Her master bath toilet is on a corner outside wall so I'm guessing that it just gets colder on that side of the house.

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46 years being in the plumbing business and hot water lines freeze first. Less oxygen dissolved in hot water. Hot water sounds different than cold water when it exists your faucet and hits the sink.

People often will crack the hot and cold lines and let them drip but few people think about flushing the toilet occasionally to keep those lines unfrozen.

Why not water in pipes? In order to say that definitively then you have to know for certain the conditions required for it to happen, or not. What is observed and acknowledged is that it can happen because it does happen.

Maybe it does it most of the time in pipes? Maybe those are the right circumstances?

Seems to be a consistent observation from someone who has first hand knowledge through years of witnessing it happening.

To answer your question, look into the research that has been done on that and take note of the factors that they consider that cannot happen in a pipe. For example, evaporation.

Evaporation 100% happens in a pipe.

That’s just a fact.

What makes you think it doesn’t?

Because if you have water in a sealed jar the volume doesn’t seem to change?

Evaporation (and hint, condensation) is still happening.

There should be no free air space in a pipe under pressure, as there would be in a typical jar.

Think about it.

Authoritarian physics, goodness gracious. Physicist simply do not understand out of equilibrium systems, so they cannot rationalize how it happens, therefore it doesn't.:rolleyes:

The hot water line in my garage freezes faster than the cold, and there isn't anything special about my garage.;)

Hot water has more volume than cold water.

When hot water cools it occupies less space.

When you think about it, our grandmothers took advantage of that basic principle to put up their preserves.

*Caveat *

Again, you are confusing two separate issues.

The pipe effectively has one open end, with water being pushed into it under pressure. Your hypothetical loss of volume won’t happen, because there’s an endless supply of water behind that volume which cools, to replace it.

If your granny canned things like mine did, that’s an entirely different set of facts.

I’ve never seen a plumbing system that consisted solely of a straight pipe with the open end pointed up.

By your logic we’d never have to bleed our brake systems because all the air would escape on its own.

Why doesn’t it?

You’re not understanding this at all.

You have a pipe supplying water to something in your house. At one end is the valve, faucet, whatever it’s in your sink, toilet, shower, wherever the pipe ends up.

What’s at the other end?

If you think about it for half a minute at the other end is a pump or water tower, miles and miles away. There are no closed valves between your pipe and whatever pushes the water at the other end. I’m oversimplifying things but i’m doing so, so that you understand.

If the water at your end of the pipe contracts because it cools, that volume is immediately filled by more water being pushed into the pipe from the city supply end.

In your granny’s jar you will note that she left a little head space above the liquid level for air. After the contents of the jar were heated, she screwed the lid shut and has the air and contents of the jar cooled, it creates a partial vacuum in the air pocket. The jar was a closed system, there was nothing more coming into the jar.

And, just for the plumbers, we’re ignoring that modern house is may have water hammer arrestors that older houses don’t, etc.