jack wrote:
"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in message
...
"jack" wrote in message
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So, why do some pipes burst, but not this one? The ice expanded out the
top,
There's your answer. Solder a valve on one end, fill, close valve, then
freeze
Sealing the top doesn't seem right. The one time I had broken pipes, they
were drained, but there was some residue left in low spots. They had plenty
of room to expand into.

I thought a better test would be to put a right angle bend on the pipe; then
fill it and let it freeze. The right angle would reduce the ice's ability
to expand, and would be pretty much like real plumbing.

4 hours at zero and it didn't do anything but freeze. It didn't even swell.

Apparently my simulation is deficient. Maybe the bottom of the L has to be
much longer?

Was the broken/frozen piping in the house L or M? The thin wall stuff
is much more likely to burst although heavier isn't a guarantee it won't.

Clearly you must have had sufficient volume in the particular places and
a restriction sufficient for there not to be the expansion room or it
wouldn't have burst then, either.

There's also a difference in the internal roughness of new vs old pipe
that an ice column might slide a little on new pipe where the scale and
corrosion on used won't as easily. There does have to be a restriction,
though.

However, I'd guess the biggest problem in the simulation is that you're
unable to actually completely fill the volume and so there's sufficient
air volume available to compress to accomodate the phase expansion. In
a plumbing system, there is essentially no air volume in a pipe--that's
harder to do w/o the continual feed.

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