On Sun, 06 Sep 2015 22:44:01 -0500, GMC
wrote:

The U shaped pipe under my garage floor has frozen the last 2 winters in
the lengthy extreme cold spells. I have been away for 10 weeks each of
the last 2 winters. The first winter my house watcher flushed toilets
and ran water once a week. This resulted in a mess inside the house
from
backing up after a few weeks. The second winter I decided to skip
having him run any water in the house to avoid a repeat situation. What
I did not realize was the furnace gave off condensation (about 3 gal per
24 hours) and goes through the waste water pipes under the garage floor
through the U shaped pipe and out towards the sewer. This amount of
water also froze over time. The 2 feet depth on each side of the U
freeze
solid. I am not 100% sure but it may start in the section of pipe under
ground just outside the wall of the garage. It took 4 hours of umbels
time and 1 hour of time from a guy with a steam jenny (sp?) to thaw it
out. I have no idea how to keep underground pipes from freezing.
This is a
townhouse built on a slab. I know of 2 other homes on the street with no
one home for an extended period of time during this cold period that did
not have any issues. Any suggestions on a solution?

Farmers in times past would've put square straw bales over the area
of the suspected freeze up. Would the insulation blankets used by
concrete workers be any help?
My second thought was to constantly run RV antifreeze into the
pipes. Irrigation wells have oil drippers to constantly oil them.
A couple pictures: http://preview.tinyurl.com/okzaw63
The brass knob adjusts the flow rate. It's typically a few drops/minute.
The black piece is an automatic shutoff. It can be set to run constantly.
Another pictu http://preview.tinyurl.com/nqnumh4



--
Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/