On Sun, 09 Jan 2011 18:21:49 -0500, Metspitzer wrote:

On Sun, 09 Jan 2011 15:03:06 -0500, Frank
wrote:

On 1/9/2011 2:18 PM, Metspitzer wrote:
Here in winter, most days it at least gets above freezing.
(Alabama/Georgia) The nights are supposed to be down in the low 20s
this week.
In my sister's house, the water heater is in a utility room
with no heat. The hot water pipe is in an outside wall so her hot
water freezes during these cold times. I have suggested she put a
100W bulb in the overhead light and leave it on to keep the pipes from
freezing. This has helped, but it still freezes if the temp stays
below freezing for more than a day.
She only needs enough heat in the small x small room to keep
the pipe from freezing. A 100W lamp is not enough and a room heater
is really too much. Can someone suggest something in between?

Pipes on an outside wall are even a bad idea in a heated room.
I had a similar situation where pipes in a heated room ran overhead an
unheated room, a small storage area, and I also put a light bulb there
to no avail and pipes froze and broke. Only good solution is to use
heating tapes on pipe but access is not always good. In my case, I had
pipes rerun through heated space.

I am not exactly sure of the story of how it happened but the entire
house is on a poured slab so nothing in the floor. It would have also
been a good idea to have the WH inside somewhere out of the way.

Inside takes valuable space. My WH is in the attic over the garage, where a
"bonus room" (FROG) would be. There aren't enough cold days to make it
worthwhile to devote expensive floor space for the WH. Your sister's freezes,
which is certainly a bad design, but it's generally a good bet to use
"cheaper" space.

I could not believe it the first time she told me her hot water froze.

Hell, that was common in the NE. Idiots would route water (usually the
hydronic heat lines) in the cantilevered area of a "raised ranch".