In the basement of my house we have a whole house humidifier attached to the forced hot air heating system.
When the system is running water trickles across the filter, and hot air from the furnace blows across the filter picking up some humidity which is then distributed to the rest of the house. The rest of the water drains out of the humidifier to a small electric sump pump at the base of the furnace.
When the pump fills up it pumps the water through a small clear (well, translucent) plastic tube up to the basement ceiling, then across and out through a hole in the foundation. The tubing is 1/2 inch OD, maybe 1/4 inch ID. There is about 20 inches of this tubing sticking out of the side of the house, it comes straight out and them immediately points down so that most of this length is vertical.
What has happened a couple of times this winter is a plug of ice has developed in that part of the tube sticking out of the foundation. With the tubing clogged the little sump pump overflows and makes a small flood in the basement.
The tubing is not kinked or blocked in any other way, the ice seems to be the only obstruction.
I live in New England, Boston area. We have many, many nights and days per year when the temperature is below freezing. The odd thing is we have had this setup and used it every year for several years now, this is the first year we have had this ice plug/flooding problem.
First, always check and make sure the float and pump on the humidifier are working properly, sometimes this is the simple fix.
Secondly, whoever installed your humidifier is an idiot! No water can be run to the outside in your climate.
The drain line should be run it to an interior drain such as you laundry sink, basement floor drain, etc…
You can also tap into any existing drain pipes in the basement fairly easily.
I do not have a humidifier for the whole house, we have a small one we run in the biggest room of the house, but we don’t run it in the winter. Isn’t the air in a house fairly dry in the winter because of the heating system? Maybe you don’t need to run yours in the winter either. My thoughts won’t fix your problem, but still, might be the cheaper option than doing something else.
I’m talking about a humidifier, an appliance designed to put moisture into the air during the dry winter months.
In our basement we also have a DEhumidifier, which we have to run in the summer due to the humidity (excess moisture in the air). That one drains fine.
Whoops, I’m mistaken, sorry about that. But do you still need to use it? I guess it might depend on what you use to heat your home, or if you have someone in your home that finds it easier to breathe with it.
Re-route the line - since you are already paying for a pump, you should be able to point it about anywhere- where does the air conditioner coil pan (if any) drain?
Otherwise, either insulate or (if still made) heat tape - a tape with electrical heating element. The folks with mobile homes know this stuff - call a supplier.
Do not run it to your air conditioner drain pan! An air conditioner is designed to drain its own condensate only, besides it does not run in the winter and it may overflow and/or freeze over as well.
Insulation and heating wire will not keep the pipe from freezing outside your house. The time, cost, and wasted electricity in using these methods is unnecessary.
As I posted above, re-route it to a drain or drain pipe in your basement, etc…
This is the easiest and most reliable fix.
Actually, my first impression would be to ask how the A/C drain is run, and if it is run differently (i.e. to an inside drain) than that is exactly where I’d tie in the humidifier drain.
The most common drain would be to the same drain that your A/C coil uses, especially since it is in the basement. (I’m guessing you have no A/C)
If no A/C drain is available, you can simply run the clear poly tubing to a wash tub, slop sink, stand pipe that your washing machine uses, or a floor drain.
It’s simply water, and since it’s being pumped, gravity is not an issue. Run the poly tubing to any convenient drain.
OK: the house does have central air. That system drains exactly the same way the humidifier does: condensate drains into a (separate) pump, pumps it up across the ceiling and out a hole in the side of the foundation. Since of course the AC only ever runs when it’s hot out freezing is not an issue in this line.
The basement has no wash tub, slop sink or floor drain and the washing machine is upstairs.
We do have a sump pump in a hole dug in the floor of the basement. Naturally it is on the diametric opposite side of the room and it is sealed in pretty good because of radon remediation that was done a few years back. But it sounds like that is my best bet.
I don’t live where it’s quite as cold but I am above the snowline. The line that feeds my icemaker runs from the water line outside, through the wall and into the kitchen. It’s covered with a thick plastic insulation tubing and it doesn’t freeze. I don’t know why it wouldn’t work the same in reverse.
I stumbled onto this old thread as I was scratching my head over the exact same problem, and I only live in Maryland. The outside tubing here has plugged up with ice as well, but that only happens about once a year during sustained cold weather. A humidifier is needed in the winter to keep things from drying out inside the house due to the low humidity that results from heating the outside cold air that gets into the house.
After contemplating this pump discharge line freeze issue and dreaming up a couple of clever solutions requiring more hose, other drains, etc, as noted by the other posters here, I finally realized that all I had to do was drill a small hole (eg, 1/16 inch) in the top of the tubing where it comes out of the house, as close to the house as possible, to vent the rest of the downstream line so the water could drain out of the line before freezing. Typically the rest of the plastic hose (tygon tube) is sloping down only slightly (the line I have is only about a foot long outside the house) and may not drain out when the pump stops. Note that the relatively warm water coming out of the house should warm the hose faster than the cold hose can freeze the water, but you guys in New England are on your own on that! Avoid a long discharge hose outside your house and it should work fine.
The vent hole should not pass any (or very much) water from the vent hole itself as it is perpendicular to the flow, making it more likely to suck air in (like an eductor). If you have a longer line with (thus) more back pressure and more of a chance to freeze the water flow, you could insert a small tube/straw in the vent hole (vertically) to provide a standpipe so the water does not come out the vent hole, assuming that is a problem due to being close to the house and foundation.
The elegant part is, even if the main tube plugs up, the vent path should stay open and allow flow out through it, and you could even have that vent tubed such that you could have the warm water from the vent directed such as to warm up the outside of the plugged main tube, perhaps unplugging it before the vent tube plugs with ice, too. You should only have to drill that vent hole, however.
A simple solution is to use a heating tape. They are made to protect hoses and water pipes from freezing.
We used them under my grandmothers house. You wrap the heating tape around the pipe/hose and plug them in at night. Or get a lamp timer and set it to turn them on at dark and off the next morning. You only need to protect the section of pipe that freezes.