Turns out we DID have a frozen pipe inside the house, and boy do I feel silly for not having found it! Brandon had someone from the water company come test our pressure at the meter. They said the meter was fine, so we must have a frozen pipe inside the house. When I took the heat gun to the pipes last night, I did the whole section of pipe that runs near the front of the house close to the foundation, but that didn’t seem to fix it. I was specifically avoiding about a 6 inch section behind a beam because it’s a very old wooden beam and it’s covered in coal dust so I didn’t want to risk setting it on fire with the heat gun. Well, turns out that’s exactly where the pipe was frozen! Brandon tried again with the heat gun this morning and sure enough, the pipes cleared. I guess when those previous owners 60 years ago wrapped that pipe and stuffed all those clothes into the crack between the front porch crawl space and the water pipe, this was exactly what they had in mind.
Consider me newly educated in hindsight.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackLive and learn! I supposed you will be insulating that pipe later today!
I have a similar pipe as well. I can always tell if it is below zero AND windy outside because the cold side of the kitchen sink will freeze (I don’t even need to see an outdoor thermometer). I use a hairdryer because my heat gun has one setting–”surface of the sun.” In the future, I would like to wrap the pipe with the electrical heating tape I see at Menards. It’s only about four inches of pipe that’s affected.
That idea about the heating tape is a good idea, Rob! I’ll have to look into something like that. Meanwhile, we were in Lowe’s yesterday and scoped out some supplies for insulating and sealing up the hole leading to the crawl space under the porch.
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