Frozen Heating Pipes - need professional opinion
 

Hello All -

This is my first winter in my new home and there is an anomalous heating
issue.

The house is colonial with a bonus room over the garage (Finished Room Over
Garage - FROG in some areas). We have a high end furnace with hot water
baseboard heat. The first floor zone works great, but the second floor zone
has frozen on us each time it got below 10F. Fortunately we have plastic
pipes, but I don't like having heat. My opinion is that there is a pipe in
the bonus room freezing between furnace calls be the second floor
thermostat. The thermostat is in the hallway and is sometimes satisfied by
the first floor heat rise (particularly when the fireplace is going). This
results in the second floor heating system sitting idle long enough for the
pipe to freeze.

I don't want to tear the house apart now (I'll need to do something in the
spring) and don't want to run the upstair thermostat at 75 all winter.

I believe I can largely solve the problem by putting some anti-freeze into
the pipes, but my google research yield mixed advice. BTW, I have plastic
pipes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
P

--
_______________________________________
I'm lo-carb, eat me

"El Penguini" wrote in message
...

I don't want to tear the house apart now (I'll need to do something in the
spring) and don't want to run the upstair thermostat at 75 all winter.

Can you get a programmable thermostat that you can set to put the
temperature at 75 for an hour out of every six or so?

Thanks for the quick response! I have programmable thermostats (perhaps a
contributor to this problem, actually) but they only allow four time
settings - wakeup, leave, return and sleep. I guess I could change to
another style that would allow more programming options. Definitely a
suggestion I'll think about.

Thanks!

UP
"Andrew Koenig" wrote in message
...
"El Penguini" wrote in message
...

I don't want to tear the house apart now (I'll need to do something in
the
spring) and don't want to run the upstair thermostat at 75 all winter.

Can you get a programmable thermostat that you can set to put the
temperature at 75 for an hour out of every six or so?

El Penguini wrote:
Hello All -

This is my first winter in my new home and there is an anomalous heating
issue.

The house is colonial with a bonus room over the garage (Finished Room Over
Garage - FROG in some areas). We have a high end furnace with hot water
baseboard heat. The first floor zone works great, but the second floor zone
has frozen on us each time it got below 10F. Fortunately we have plastic
pipes, but I don't like having heat. My opinion is that there is a pipe in
the bonus room freezing between furnace calls be the second floor
thermostat. The thermostat is in the hallway and is sometimes satisfied by
the first floor heat rise (particularly when the fireplace is going). This
results in the second floor heating system sitting idle long enough for the
pipe to freeze.

SNIP
One quickie fix may be to install a bypass around the 2nd floor
zone valve. Use a ball valve, which can be set to throttle flow.
Anytime the boiler circ pump runs (for the 1st floor), a small amt of
hot water will circ to the FROG whether or not 2nd floor stat is
calling for heat.

Come Spring you can do a better job of insulating the FROG.

Jim

I assume you cannot get to the pipes? If you could, you could wrap
them with electrical heating tape, and power it with an extension cord.
Temporary fix maybe??

--James--

"Speedy Jim" wrote in message
...
El Penguini wrote:
Hello All -

This is my first winter in my new home and there is an anomalous heating
issue.

The house is colonial with a bonus room over the garage (Finished Room Over
Garage - FROG in some areas). We have a high end furnace with hot water
baseboard heat. The first floor zone works great, but the second floor zone
has frozen on us each time it got below 10F. Fortunately we have plastic
pipes, but I don't like having heat. My opinion is that there is a pipe in
the bonus room freezing between furnace calls be the second floor
thermostat. The thermostat is in the hallway and is sometimes satisfied by
the first floor heat rise (particularly when the fireplace is going). This
results in the second floor heating system sitting idle long enough for the
pipe to freeze.

SNIP
One quickie fix may be to install a bypass around the 2nd floor
zone valve. Use a ball valve, which can be set to throttle flow.
Anytime the boiler circ pump runs (for the 1st floor), a small amt of
hot water will circ to the FROG whether or not 2nd floor stat is
calling for heat.

Come Spring you can do a better job of insulating the FROG.

Jim

This is Turtle.

I think you hit it there.
Now maybe a 1/4" needle valve like for cut offs for ice makers but have it
brass. Then you could almost run it wide open to not cut the seat out of the
valves.

TURTLE

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:46:55 -0500, someone wrote:


This is my first winter in my new home...

Just new to you, or new construction? If new construction, the
builder should GET HIS ASS DOWN THERE and fix this mess. It aint
right. And BTW, what the problem with tearing open the garage ceiling
to work on this NOW? You can put the insulation back, even the gyp
board, and just not tape it until Spring.

In the meantime, glycol. It does have its downsides, but in our area
many people - including us - have it - rural area with relatively
frequent power outages.

Good luck,

-v.


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