Help!!! Pipes severely frozen

i still say it's airlocked.

did you just move there? can you call the previous owner and ask him how he dealt with an airlock? wish someone had told me so i didn't have to figure it out for myself. if the house has working gravity flow water, chances are good it is buried deep enough.

don't think they ever did say where they are located.

you are being awesome answering me and you are very helpfull,
my husband went up and put the brine in, he had to put his arms in to stilck in the pipe (in the spring) and he got the pipe in the intake a few feet and hit something solid... maybe ice? Debris? he put the brine in there and had to get home... so cold... SO hopefully somehting, it warmed up today 2 degrees above freezing, but what if that pipe is frozen the hole way up? can that happen!?
thanks
jaci

Super effective if you can get it into contact with the ice. That is the question here. Will the salt get into the area of any ice and by what mechanism? Small diameter pipes tend to have little interchange of fluids between zones along their length by normal means assumed in a number of methods.

Why I mentioned the blowing with air in the first thoughts. Trying to get down to the ice plug (if it exists) and apply the brine directly to it.

Difficult to tell from afar. Usually pipes that are being used in periodic periods don't freeze totally solid unless there are some extreme circumstances. Knowing the history of this installation would help a lot, as well as exactly what is the type piping, diameters, depth buried, type soils, etc.

If you got the brine well placed should tell a bit in a short spell. Try running an electricians snake down in there too with a sort of sharp point. See if you can tell by feel what is being hit. Better localize the exact point as to depth, length of pipe out of the spring intake area. Corrosion sometimes will come back stuck to the snake if it is corroded.

I did a fire restoration job on a monster boarding house that sat thru about 2 very super cold months with some water lines that still had water. Only a few actually burst. Some pushed their copper fittings apart, some drains froze. Always difficult to tell what you got until enough playing is done. Many claim the damage will always occur, sometimes it doesn't. Very little on that job, I put antifreeze in the toilet bowls a couple days after the fire and didn't lose a one. :no: Difficult to predict.

Would still plan on that manure covering. This might be freezing in an area just after the spring intake that is buried on a sloping path and fails to be deep enough in that localized area. A good dose of manure right in that area might be the first place to apply, if this seems to prove to be freeze related.

I doubt this is air locking. If the piping run forms a siphon type bump due to lay of the land could be a factor. Most straight down hill shots don't have air binding problems unless somehow the inlet area is gimpy by some means or some other factor is at play. Knowing the history should shed some light in this area. If the factors are built in, should happen about every time.

Do you have any means to blow back the entire pipe with air from the house???

Do you have any means to blow back the entire pipe with air from the house???


We can get an air compressor tomorrow and use that,
as for the history I wish I knew myself! All the disclosure statement tells us is that it is galvanized pipe (i just read through it again, I thought it was lead), and there have never been any problems with freezing in the past 50 years the previous owner lived here, but the pipes are way to small, and we discovered a while ago the screen filter had come off the spring, maybe dirt in the line is making the ice easier to form... but finally the steamer seems to be working and we are getting what seems to be very very dirty water coming back out, hopefully the thing is melting some ice! We are in Northern Vermont almost canada, and the morning it probably froze it was 35 below here! On our disclosure statement it says that the spring is 2600 feet from our house, but walking it we guess about 700 feet, is it common to put a spring so far away?

Thanks for all your help, I really appreciate it!
Jaci

Have some family back there. Long spring lines are fairly common with older properties. Back when it was developed water consumption wasn't what it is today so the pipe was plenty big enough for them. Accumulated dirt and corrosion don't help either. As to freezing this year, I understand in many places there has been very little snow cover. The snow insulates the ground and keeps the frost line from going so deep. This cold snap of -30+ and the lack of snow has frozen a lot of water lines back there (I've heard).

Glad you were able to get things running again. Come summer you may want to hook a gas powered pump up to the uphill end. Disconnect the downhill end and blast it out. Maybe even consider re-running the line deeper, tho it sounds like this winter has mostly been the culprit. For this winter try to keep water running thru and hope for some snow.

Eric

I would suspect if you really do have galvanized pipes they are full of crud. Metal pipes like that are little mini-batteries when buried in soil. Dissimilar materials undergo galvanic corrosion. The tin in galvanized materials can be fairly active. Usually buried galvanized materials are given a tar type coating to attempt to reduce this effect. This corrosion tends to take any minerals in the water and plate them out in the pipe, even tho the water is cold. Happens in drain lines too, usually is a long term process. They can be as hard as concrete and reduce the diameter and restrict flow.

So the interior walls of the pipe probably are very rough in nature due to pitting, plating and build ups. If you had a filter failure any materials washed down the lines will tend to want to hang up if the pipe walls are not smooth. Couple this with a potential for freezing might start to explain some of the problems. It may be more than one problem, one factor aggravating the other.

Blowing back would be nice. This tends to lift and unseat most plugs if dirt or debris. If you can get even tiny flows down the entire line, the brine will rapidly clear any ice. For guidelines a 10% solution should give ~25 F freeze point, (20-25%) solution can drop you into the 0-5 F range. Brine may even have a chemical effect of loosening crud.

Might be pointing more to plugging and not freezing if the history is true. If the line can be cleared might be possible to treat it short term with something like CLR or some other cleaning agent.

You put a spring where ever the water is. In this case it was probably that far away as a good reliable source. Horrible error in distance between 2600 and 700 feet. Usually can get a good estimate by normal walking stride of 30" and counting steps and converting that into feet.

What does the diameter of the line appear to be???

If you can get the line flowing, we can compute a volume to add some cleaning agents and attempt to at least for the short term make the system more operative.

The diameter of the line is 3/4 inch, my husband is using a HUGE air compressor now, still no water, it was so warm today above freezing, and I was hoping it would help, we are considering a few things like putting in above ground line to reburry later, we had a guy come today and estimate a well, and we got an estimate on a new spring...but we are gonna give it all we got for a few more days in case the line decides to cooperate! What would happen if we put clr in the intake and tried not to get it in the spring, how long would it take for the water to be useable again?
Thanks,
Jaci

You still have the same basic problem. Is the line frozen or plugged with some crud??? Or maybe both.

Might be helpful to review how the problem occurred. Did everything work correctly before the cold snap??? If so, likely cause is it froze. Were there any sort of problems getting water to flow before this cold snap???

One warm day won't make that much difference short term. Putting the manure on top and generating some heat into the ground will.

The CLR will do no good until this problem is solved. I computed right at 16 gallons is the volume in the line itself. If this plug can be cleared, might be nice to attempt to clean the line if it is serviceable for some more life in the future.

To use the CLR you would drain the line, mix up the concentration desired and fill the line keeping the spring water out with for a period, say overnight and then draining and flushing the CLR. Probably using a drain method that would not put it thru the normal inhouse piping, water filters / treatment or septic system.

All of you handy Y-chromosomed members are so awesome. If I get into trouble, I'll know who to call. GRRRRR! What a buncha guys!

LOL!! Whenever I have a problem, or need advice about something, I come here! I always get good advice (and maybe some bad, so you do need to be able to sort things out a little, LOL!!).

If that pipe is run at the depth that it is supposed to be at, and the ground has frozen that deep, I doubt that putting manure on the surface is going to warm things up clear down to where the pipe is. It won't hurt anything, but I'm not sure how much help it will be.

If you do dig the pipe up and replace it (and it sounds like it really needs to be replaced), not only dig the trench deeper if you can -- if there isn't too much granite -- but there is also plastic pipe insulation that you can put on the pipe. Also, any time the weather is really cold, keep the water running at least a trickle. Running water won't freeze, though I have had situations where I had to leave the water practically gushing rather than just a trickle. But I don't think it gets quite that cold where you are, so a trickle should suffice.

Kathleen

For a background, I live in Minnesota on a small farm, have a deep well, remember when we used the wind mill to pump the cistern full, still use the cistern from the deep well and gravity feed water from the cistern to the barn for my ~40 cattle. The deep well was made in the 70's, the windmill & cistern pipe was put in the 50's or 40's or earlier and i have both plastic & galvanized pipe underground, 3/4 inch plastic and 1.25" galvinized. This winter we had minus 25 for several days with no snow, have had -36 in the past.

In short, I'm pretty familar with all the components you are dealing with. Sorry for your problems, we have, knock on wood, never froze up a main supply line, they are all more than 6 feet here & I make an effort to run 50 gallons a day in cold snaps.

Galvinized pipe _can_ give problems as others mention, however I just dug up some of that mid-1940's pipe & it looked about new. I would not assume it is shot. If you have hard water it can fill with scale, but spring water might not be all that hard. Galvinized pipe was the standard for underground here.

The plastic into glavanized pipe under my barn floor was burried only a foot or 2 deep. Even with a foot of manure on it, that sucker freezes every year. Royal pain, cemented in. Pipe is older than me, think from the 50's. Has never broken, thaws every spring. Same thing with the chicken barn, I have a vertical galvanized pipe that has no drain-back, it just freezes every year, again has done so for decades. Sometimes frozen pipes burst, but don't assume they have.

My biggest water headach is that air-lock some talk about. For those who have not run into it, it is _frustrating_ to say the least!!!!! My cistern is on top of the hill, barn is on the bottom of the hill, outdoor water supply can sometimes freeze in the pit with a bitter south wind - a bucket of hot water will thaw it. Oh, how many trips I've wasted with hot water on those cold days, only to have it be an air-lock. My system would appear to be all downhill, but somewhere somehow it will airlock if the cistern ever goes empty. The best way to clear is pump water up from the downhill side untill the pipe is all full. However, adding one tank of air (not a compressor hooked up, that is too slow/low a volume of air, need 100# 11 gal tank to fill the pipe) and allowing the air out; then add 2 tanks of air & uncapping the pipe fast so the air/water can rush out makes it flow like new..... Do not ask the headache & work & number of trips to learn _that_ combination makes the water work again. We have a tire valve threaded into the pipe by the barn for this. But anyhow, don't discount that air-lock thing too fast.

Welders work if it is frozen. Hear of that being used on metal pipe all the time. Never had the pleasure, but you get a welder guy with exprience, a portable welder with a couple 100 feet of cable, and a backhoe/ air hammer to dig pits to the pipe, and have at it. Not cheap, but gets you running again. Lots of things can be done 'wrong' so get someone who has done this before.

To me it sounds like your spring fed some dirt into the head of your pipe, and your pipe is plugged with junk. Don't believe it was frozen. Would sure be good to blow the pipe out from the bottom up. You need a big pressure tank, let it blow, not just a working compressor, but a good sized tank of air. Of course this has hazzard with too much pressure, old fittings, etc. Be smart, but you need 100# pressure in a tank, let the air flow, and no leaks, need it to move whatever is in the pipe.

I'll put $25 on it being a plugged pipe because the screen came off or scale buildup. Second choice is an air lock. Only way you froze up is if water wasn't running for several days - if you keep water running every 12 hours or so the water brings it's own heat into the gorund. If the previous owners said it didn't freeze in 50 years. Ground takes a long time to freeze deep. If it was frozen, it will take well into spring to thaw natually, the ground has a pendilum effect & even when it is 50 outside for days, the heat now needs to work through the soil. Slowly. Likewise the pipe would freeze a day or 2 after the coldest day, the cold has to travel.... Manure will only contaminate your spring, can't see a little manure make any heat that will go 5' deep - my 5' pile of manure by the barn freezes solid every winter, I get ice lumps from the middle in May when I haul it out.

Now, did you do any digging or change dirt over the pipe, or run a road or heavy equip over the pipeline? Digging up & refilling a trench does not pack well the first year, & you coulda caused a spot that the frost went deeper; or a road packs the soil very hard & frost usually goes a foot deeper in such areas.

Don't be too quick to pour junk into your water system, you can make a mess in a hurry or eat your pipe into swiss cheeze - that will require that deep well to be dug real soon. Get water running, flush with lots of water, & keep junk (both dirt & added chemicals) out!

--->Paul

To restart a gravity water system that has a air lock I have found that connecting the suction side of a wet/dry shop vacuum to the incoming line at the house quickly removes the air lock.

Yup, I would say the problem of air locks is not as big as many are saying there are ways to either avoid the problem or fix it.

Pulling a vacuum as Agmantoo says it one way. The other is modify the fill method. Gravity drain lines (which is what these applications really are) is a bit of a science and some of an art. The trick is to avoid either dragging air down into the line or giving a way for it to move once in the line or finding a way to vent it.

Most air locks probably occur because of excessive rates of fill. If you must fill with the discharge end shut off, use very small fill flows, experience will guide in the application. Example in some you may wish to block the intake line in some manner and only allow a very small weep flow to fill say over night, always being sure a large vent path is available on the inlet of the pipe being filled. Computing the gallons / capacity in your line is not rocket science. You can guessimate a fill time fairly well.

In other applications where lots of flow is available, you may wish to fill a flowing line. Open the discharge end and establish a very small flow rate much less than the line capacity, say 5 - 10%. Once a tiny flow is established, start to vary discharge and inlet rates to make the inlet flow slightly higher that the discharge. The line will fill over a time period. Line flow will tend to sweep any entrained air out. Undersized lines will always be tricky and problematic.

If lines are laid with a dip and upslope before they drop in a gravity mode, they can be modified to build a teed vent line to break any lock that may occur. Best done by realizing the layout of the line will potentially give a spot to trap an air bubble in its initial layout.

This particular problem as described does not seem to be air lock related. The fact that it will not air blow back even with a hefty compressor points to either a freeze or plugged problem. Rethinking exactly how the problem occurred in the few days / hours prior to losing the line might give some hints. Knowing its total vertical drop / normal pressure (flowing and shutoff at the house facuets) / accurate length would help in evalution and knowing what pressure must be available in a blow back scheme.

The fact that the disclosure history is claiming it never froze in the prior 50 years would point to been buried at the proper depth. Every one of these is different, the devil is in the details.

This particular application may be a bit of a snooker job in the prior owner didn't pass on any tips used to prevent problems. i.e. When / how to establish bleed flows to prevent freeze ups in extreme conditions. How often periodic flushes where done, etc. We still don't know did this particular application flow well prior to this problem, was it maybe a fairly well scaled up line, just waiting to go wrong??

If anybody has manure piles freezing solid, I don't want to go there. I don't even want to visit, don't think I even want to know it can happen. :no: