Frozen bathroom pipes?

[Colibri]

@SUREGIRL

I have no water in only one bathroom in my house. Im assuming the pipes are frozen. The pipes are NOT accessible. They are somewhere in the wall or floor. The fixtures, toilet, tub and shower are all on outside walls of the house. I am in a townhome and the bathroom is on the third floor. I have had a space heater in the bathroom since 6AM yesterday morning - all the faucets are open - STILL NO WATER.

Moderator Note

I have merged two similar questions on the same problem of frozen bathroom pipes. This is the second one.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Eva_Luna]

@MikeG

PEX is not allowed by code where Eva Luna is. I’ll second insulating the pipes and asking the plumber if there is anything they can install valve wise or drainage wise to prevent this in the future.

Well, we need to have a condo meeting anyway, and topic #1 will be insulating the crawlspace/storage area generally. In a really big way. Also possibly heat. Boy, right now I am glad we have a shower at work.

Should we avoid using the water in the places where it’s still working until we get a plumber in to fix everything? As you can imagine, local plumbers are slammed, so I don’t know how long it will take. And at least now we can cook, brush teeth, etc. The water in the kitchen (at least the cold) is still working, as is the guest bathroom sink.

P.S. The condo conversion (and the plumbing) were done in 2003, and nobody had a problem with frozen pipes until now.

[Magiver]

@Eva_Luna

Oh goody; we now have a burst pipe in the basement. Luckily it’s over the crawlspace, which has nothing important in it. In hindsight, is there any way we could have handled this differently once we realized the pipes had frozen?

The fasted way to thaw them is to soak a rag in hot water and lay on pipe. that will transfer heat much faster than a hair dryer. If it froze because of an outside faucet then get a frost-proof unit and remember to remove the garden hose. That way the water is kept 1 foot from the outside of the house.

However, a crawl space is going to get very cold so you really need to install heat tape and as an added precaution you should have a cut off valve installed behind a bleed valve in the basement. That way you can cut off the water to that section of the house and drain it so there is air in it. You do this in case of a power outage or when you go on vacation to get away from the cold.

[Rachellelogram]

@Eva_Luna

Oh goody; we now have a burst pipe in the basement. Luckily it’s over the crawlspace, which has nothing important in it. In hindsight, is there any way we could have handled this differently once we realized the pipes had frozen?

When temperatures get below a certain point, leave your faucets on to drip all day and night. We had to do this when I was a kid in Indiana and never had to deal with frozen pipes.

[Eva_Luna]

I’ve lived in the Chicago area just about my whole life (with breaks for college and grad school), and I’m 45 and never had a frozen pipe until now. Sigh.

We are definitely going to do some serious insulating down there for sure. Yay homeownership!

[johnpost]

crawl spaces need to be handled in special ways.

in humid or wet times you want ventilation to keep them dry.

in winter you want to keep them warm. just insulating without bringing in heat and ventilating during warm months can cause problems.