YMMV.
The main part of this house was built in 1934. There’s a bedroom door between the water heater and the laundry room, so I assume the water destined to be heated and the cold water supply split somewhere. The laundry room and bathroom are on exterior walls. I assume (there’s that word again) that the drains go straight down (with a U-bend to keep out the gasses) from where they are. The temperature in that part of the house is typically 45º to 50º in the Winter when I’m not at home, and warmer when I am. I figured out last year that the cold water enters the house in the wall between the smallest bedroom and the laundry room. So when the drain froze I cranked up a portable radiator heater near the wall and closed the bedroom door. After a couple of days the drain was clear and I had cold water again. (I had cold water in the kitchen, fortunately. Maybe it has a separate entry. Or else it’s upstream from the laundry room. Still had to fill the toilet tank with a bucket until the water came back.)
Oh, I wish I had natural gas! The propane that heats my house is expensive.
an anecdote:
I owned a house that had been vacant for a year, with the heat off. (I had owned it for 5 years at that point) I arranged for the water to be turned on and recklessly didn’t go there to meet the city water people.
It was turned on on Friday, and I calculated (by volume) 5000 gallons of water had flowed into the basement from a frozen pipe in the basement by the time I got there Monday.
Not a good day.
If it was frozen, how was water flowing out of it?
kidding !
I disagree. As an example: I have a pipe that runs through the 1st floor ceiling of my house and then through the outer wall of the 2nd story which is next to the attic of the 1st floor bump-out. even with insulation it is exposed to the cold of the attic space. There is no way to heat it directly.
The OP is stopping in the house regularly. 1-2 times a week. a few of you are over thinking this.
Set the heat at 45-50.
If you want greater peace of mind you could shut off the main when your not there if it is easy to do but its not necessary.
No need to heat up the basement further it is the area of the house of least concern for freezing.
Don’t leave water running unless the heating in the house has failed for some reason.
ferpetesake.
In grade school I learned that water freezes at 32°. Only when I became a contractor did I learn the following:
If your house loses power tonight and the temperature falls to 25° your pipes will likely not freeze. In fact, it would take several says at 25° for your pipes to freeze and burst.
I also learned that theres an exception to every rule—even a general rule. The general rule, IME, is that 1 out of a couple hundred houses (or less) has water pipes in exterior walls. (with sill cocks as a general exception) This isn’t capricious, all plumbers have figured out that water freezes at 32° and the professionals avoid water pipes in exterior walls.
I’ve also learned that the risk of pipes freezing has an awful lot less to do with the indoor ambient than the outdoor ambient. In other words, if the OP has one of these houses (and Chicago bungalows generally do not) that has piping in the exterior walls, setting the thermostat to 65° will do little to help, as Johnny L.A. has shown us.
By way of example, in January 2008 the Midwest had a 15 day cold snap with temperatures well below 0°. Parts of Chicagoland saw temps of -20°. In Dayton, Ohio we saw -15°. Four days later, when the temps approached 30° the ice plugs gave way and the phone would not stop ringing. These were occupied homes with thermostat settings of 70°. In every instance, it was water pipes in crawl spaces, or kitchen walls on frame on slab ranches.
So if you’re arguing for the exception, than I say “meh.” OTOH, even if the OP’s house has boodles of exterior pipes he has much greater risk from the outdoor temperature----the weather---- than the risk of setting the stat to 45°. Put another way, if he has exterior piping it should be corrected no matter what—even if he is living in the house and the stat is at 70°; because one good Chicago cold snap will freeze those pipes.
The OP is free to choose his course. IME, setting the stat to 45°-50° and turn the water off daily when he leaves and he will likely have no problems.
agreed 100%
This is the type of advice that keeps plumbers and insurance adjusters running around.
45 degrees near the thermostat means something MUCH less near an exterior wall.
I did a number of home restorations and our only source of this side work was people who said, “But I set my heat to 48 (or some other low number)”. How nice. It is a cozy 48 near the thermostat.
Insurance companies will sometimes require proof the the heat was at 58 or higher. If the bills are so low that the insurance company wonders if you had it set warm enough… it can affect the payout.
No it doesn’t. The stat location is representative of the house temperature. If you’re telling me that its 45° at the stat location and a full 13+ degrees colder somewhere in the same house, I’d say you have much bigger problem----like several open windows. It is inconceivable that you’d have a 13 degree swing in the same house, whether it was 45°, 65° or 75°.
ETA: This is simply not remotely possible. Even with open windows, the house would equalize; it would be a consistent temperature throughout.
In other words, it’s just not possible that it’s 48° at the stat and 30° at the exterior walls. If the envelope was that poor the heat loss would, in short order, make the whole house 30°.
My friend (from whom I bought my house) had the pipes replaced with some sort of plastic pipes that are said to resist bursting. Is it true that they’re burst-resistant?
(I don’t know which pipes these were. Obviously the ones within the walls were not replaced.)
Perhaps “Pex” pipe, as it is more pliable that PVC, or CPVC. It will “give” or allow for expansion more than [rigid] PVC/CPVC. I’ve never looked up any info on freezing and Pex, but I would guess it resists bursting more than the others.
‘Pex’ sounds familiar, and my friend said the plumber recommended it. What little I can see of it (under the bathroom sink) is white and looks like PVC.
There appears to be 2 questions (and answers)
One is, is it possible that you could use a functioning furnace set at 48° and have water freezing in the house? The answer is no.
The second is, is it possible to have a house at 48° and have frozen pipes that are in exterior walls? The [short] answer is yes.
The longer answer is that the vast majority of homes do not have water pipes in exterior walls, and the greatest risk for most of them is older sill cocks that are not freeze proof. (sill cocks are for your garden hose outside)
For the small percentage of homes that have water pipes in exterior walls, it is true that raising the setpoint on your stat will help----it can’t hurt. (except your utility bill)
But we’re talking about heat transfer here. So raising your stat to 65° will cause some heat transfer to the exterior walls. Some. We’re talking about some quantity of Btus.
OTOH, a much greater heat transfer takes place via weather. So…if the weather in Chicago goes to -20° tomorrow the amount of Btus “given up” to the environment (read: heat transfer) will exceed the the Btus you put into the wall via running the stat up to even 70°. This is why occupied homes, set at 72° will have burst pipes.
But the fact remains that even a house with water pipes in the exterior walls (as I said, a small percentage of all homes) with stats sat at 48° will require an outside temperature of much lower than 32° for an extended period before the pipes freeze. You are putting some Btus into that space—even at 48°. To essentially “overcome” those Btus and transfer them to the outside environment requires very cold weather.
So to the OP I say this: my earlier advice stands, fwiw. If you have piping actually in the exterior walls you may set the stat to 50° and open the door under the sink or wherever the exterior pipes are. I’ve even set out a small electric heater in the kitchen near exterior pipes.
That gets you through the next 4 weeks. If you don’t have any pipes in exterior walls, simply set it at 45° and turn off the water each day when you leave.
If you do have pipes in exterior walls, the “fix” isn’t simply moving into the house, (and raising the stat to 70°) because they may still be vulnerable to freezing.
Pipes in exterior walls should have [ideally] 1) heat trace, 2) pipe insulation and 3) insulation in the wall cavity itself.
Pex is flexible and that’s the easiest way to identify it. It also uses “rings” of different varieties to make connections. It comes in white, red and blue colors.
If the stuff you see is rigid, and white, (as opposed to cream colored) it’s likely PVC.
I’m not sure how well it stands up to freezing vis a vis copper, but I would guess better. (although I have replaced frozen/burst PVC!)
Sorry you are confusing reality with something you read. When i lived up north (near the NWT border not montana) we would get 6 to 8 weeks of -45 to -50f every winter. Yes thats right, -45f. I can assure you that seeing frost on the inside living room wall means that its pretty damm cold. this would be a exterior wall that is directly exposed to the outside. So I agree with the poster that said its all about temps outside.
And yes cars really didnt like that weather!
Can you show a site involving any insurance company requiring a thermostat be set at 58 or higher. Your claim sounded dubious so I goggled a few variants of ‘home insurance minimum temperature’ and ‘frozen pipe coverage temp.’ and found nothing to back up that claim.
I then went as far as to call a friend of mine who is an insurance adjuster. He said in most cases of frozen pipes they don’t even bother to investigate the cause. They just investigate the damage and pay out accordingly. The recommendation by the insurance companies he serves is that the house be kept at 40 at its coldest inside point.
My livelihood is dealing with water. I install and service well water systems. I have a lot of experience with things freezing, though in my case it is often outside the house.
If the heating system and insulation is so ineffective that it can not keep a point of the house above 32 when the thermostat is set at 50 you should winterize the house completely until you deal with the larger heating problem.
I’ve seen frozen pipes with the thermostat at 70 (you should be familiar with Huber Heights slab construction from the 60’s). That was from cold soaked outdoor faucets freezing into interior pipes hidden in cabinets and walls. My parents lucked out when the pipe burst and the water shot back outside instead of flooding the house. I agree that a properly plumbed house will not have this problem but my experience with post construction “professional” plumbing modifications has been less than inspired. Homeowners will opt for the path of least resistance when it comes to having stuff ripped out.
I don’t know what the winters are like in Chicago but if I had a house with a basement I would drain the system, shut off the water and lower the heat to 45 degrees. It’s a 10 minute job with a basement sink. Done. The pipes are 100% safe. It may be overkill but when you look at the time involved it’s an easy decision. Murphy can’t come back with a loss of electricity or gas due to utility work in the neighborhood (both have happened to me in the last 2 years).
Thanks for all the responses, folks.
Here’s information I left out.
The house isn’t a bungalow. It’s a brick split-level with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The relative was actually my older brother and the house is actually the one my family moved into in 1959 when it was new and I was a kid. My brother inherited the house after my mother died and for the years since then just continued living there (it was obviously way too big for him, and I’m not exactly sure why he stayed there–I definitely will sell it within a year or two).
There’s never been any problem with the pipes freezing. I don’t think there are any pipes along the exterior walls. The basement is below ground level with a few windows inside window wells.
One of the neighbors owns 2 or 3 rental buildings (3-flats, I think), and she was quite concerned about the pipes freezing and recommended the thermostat setting and the dripping faucet. She is a bit flaky, though, so I wasn’t sure if her concern was justified. Thus my question.