DIYbanter - View Single Post - tilted frost-free sillcock

micky

On Sat, 11 Jan 2014 22:09:42 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 11 Jan 2014 18:36:15 -0500, Stormin Mormon
wrote:

On 1/11/2014 6:34 AM, micky wrote:
Inspired by Trader, I'm again looking into a frost-free sillcock, garden
faucet, which is designed, by having the actual valve 3 to 9 inches
inside the basement, not to freeze and crack open in cold weather.

The text and video pages seem to make a big deal out of tilting the pipe
down 5 degrees (so that it will fully drain after it is use) as opposed
to up 5 degrees. Up is not the alternative in my case, it is level.
All the pipes are already there and the pipe that goes outside is level.

If I do nothing, the new sillcock will be level too. It seems to me
that if the pipe I.D. is 1/2 inch, a level pipe will drain until the
water level is no more than 1/8", 1/4 of the total diameter, and that
even if it freezes then, it will expand UP into the air space. And
that 1/8" of water, or even 3/16" with all that empty space above can't
possibly freeze in a way that breaks the pipe. Won't it just lift
itself up? Closer to the center of the pipe.

(I reed that water expands a bit more than 9% when cooling between 4^C
and 0^C.)

Maybe at the inside end of the pipe, where the valve is, surface tension
will keep the water level higher, but that will be 6" into my basement,
where the temp is always about 68^. Can water freeze inside the pipe
when it's 68F outside, and the pipe is metal?

I don't see how I can raise the other pipes to tip the sillcock down as
it goes out of the house. IIRC, a floor joist is in the way. Plus
it would put flex-tension on a right angle pipe or a straight union,
perhaps risking a leak there.

Thanks

Must be important, if they keep banging the
drum about the tilt. Can you make the hole
a bit longer at the bottom, and caulk or foam
the top where it's now open?
Funny, none of the (quite a few) I've installed have had any
instruction saying to point it down., just not to install vertically
up.

That's good to know.

I don't think there were ANY instructions on the ones in HD, and it
would have been a simple replacement if they didn't terminate in what
looks like a male garden hose thread. So I looked at videos, most of
which didnt' get to that but one had me making up a 3-piece connector to
go from female threads, to tubing, to a straight union. And 2 or 3
videos wanted it tipped down. I don't remember text-only bringing that
up.

My current valve is 34 years old and doesn't leak at all. I only use it
a half-dozen times a year, and in the first 4 years, the previous owner,
known as the Berry-man to the neighbors, probably used it 6 days a week
in spring and summer. All my valves that I almost never use work fine.
There's no reason to think the new one here will leak in the next 30
years.

Maybe I'll be able to point it down a degree or two, as Chris sort of
suggested. Right now it's not screwed to the bricks at all, and I think
I like it like that better than a big hole with lead anchors, but I can
fill in the hole at the top a little and let it harden before. putting
the valve in.