A relative of mine died, and I’ve inherited the house. It needs cleanup before I move in. That will take a few weeks.
At the moment I stop at the house on Tuesday and Thursday to check up on it and pick up the mail, then on the weekends I spend more time there and do more extensive cleanup.
To keep the water pipes from freezing, how warm do I have to keep the house? I currently have the thermostat at 65F (this is in Chicago).
The basement has a heating vent that’s normally closed. Since the pipes come in there, would it help to open that vent (at least a bit)?
Do I have to keep one tap trickling/dripping? I heard that an upstairs tap would be better.
I don’t want to shut off the water/drain the pipes. I know keeping the whole house heated is wasteful, but for maybe 4-6 weeks, it’d be easier.
If you have a working heating system, set the thermostat to 45°---- 50° if you’re the nervous type.
Find the incoming water line and turn it off. If you have a basement, the shut off is likely at the water meter. (assuming the meter is in the basement. If not, there will still be a shut off in the house. Open the faucets.
ETA: Shutting off the water at the main is as simple as closing the valve. It doesn’t require you to drain the pipes or anything like that. You can turn it on on any/every day that you’re in the house so you have water available. This is important though: if you shut the water off at the main, turn the water heater to “pilot.” You don’t ever want to fire a water heater if it isn’t full of water. You can simply open the water valve when you come into the house, and move the water heater’s gas valve from “pilot” to “on”, and the water heater will start firing and make hot water. In any event, it’s simply a good precaution to turn off the water at the incoming valve if a house is unoccupied.
ETA²: The only time you should open the faucets for a ‘trickle’ is when you’ve lost all means of heat and you’re worried about freezing. Any house above 33° is not in danger of freezing to so no need to open faucets unless wasting water gives you peace of mind.
Unless you have a pipe that runs through an uninsulated outer wall then 65 degrees is overkill. If the basement does not have exposure to the outside via drafty windows then it is subject to the temperature of the ground which is a constant 55 degrees (way above freezing level). The only time I ever saw a pipe freeze was in a crawl space or a pipe directly connected to an outdoor faucet. Check your outside faucets to see if they are the Frost proof variety. This means that the actual valve is about a foot inside the pipe and when you shut the water off it drains all the way back to the valve which is inside the basement. If that is the case then you will not get the freezing effect from outside faucet. If you see a cutoff valve in the basement to the outside faucets then you can shut off those valves and open up the outside faucet to drain out the water. If the outer faucets are just standard valves then you can add heat tape to them for very little money as added peace of mind.
There are numerous products you can use to heat just the pipes, including pipe tracing heating cables that attach to the outside of the pipe and will offer up minimal heat to prevent freeze. Power consumption is fairly trivial; about 7 watts per foot, so even an extensive plumbing system will cost less to protect than running any furnace.
Not for 4 weeks, this time of year. On top of that, the pipes that would be most vulnerable to freezing will be inaccessible. The OP is better off with a low setting and using the furnace.
I’m a HVAC/Plumbing contractor for 20 years (and electrical, fwiw) Water that’s above 33° will not freeze. If the OP maintains the house at 45° he/she will not need to run water.
Be aware however that if the valve is part of a 90 year old plumbing system in a 90 year old house, it may not take kindly to being turned off.
When the very first shutoff valve in a house starts leaking, they have to shut things off at the street. If the street valve is also 90 years old, there’s a chance that it too will fail. The remedy for that can be expensive as it involves digging up pipes by the street.
You said, ‘Any house above 33°’. I assure you I keep my house well above 33º (or 45º), and I’ve had frozen pipes. Once was the bathtub drain, and last year it was the cold water to the bathroom and laundry room and the deep sink drain in the laundry room.
But there is always to lever type shut offs at the meter itself. If it is a an older house it may have a gate/globe valve that is calcified and unwilling to move. (and god forbid snaps off)
However, if the meter is actually in the house (and many meters have been moved to a meter pit outside) than there is almost always a shut off on both sides of the meter.
There are hundreds of feet of pipe in the average house. The cost of buying heat trace for all of it would be very expensive—certainly more than the cost of natural gas for 4 weeks, even in Chicago.
On top of that, the time/labor would be substantial. On top of that, much of those hundreds of feet are buried in walls.
Heat trace has applications where is excels----like water lines in exterior walls or in crawl spaces.
But as a temporary way to heat pipes to avoid running the furnace for 4 weeks?