My House Is Exploding

• Odin wrote on 2014-01-08 01:25
  Silly southern architects and not factoring in what-ifs for extreme cold.
  
  It helps to keep your basement warm and the cabinent under the sink open when dealing with abnormal cold.
• Cucurbita wrote on 2014-01-08 01:44
  You have to keep your house at 50 degrees minimum. This keeps water pipes from freezing. Whatever methods you find will be cheaper than fixing the damages that will be caused by your whole house flooding.
  
  I made it through the last three winters without much heat, but the heater was always at 55 just in case.
  
  I have some experience with frozen pipes.
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-01-08 01:48
  I've never tried this but wouldn't turning off the main water valve of your house and then draining the pipes (just turn on all the taps for a bit) prevent this? I assume if there's no water in the pipes then they won't explode when water freezes and expands in them, but I'm not a plumber so I don't know if doing that causes other problems (other than having no running water),
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-01-08 02:28
  That sure took a long time to explode.
• Space Pirate Nithiel wrote on 2014-01-08 03:48

  Quote from Odin;1185626:

  Silly southern architects and not factoring in what-ifs for extreme cold.
  
  It helps to keep your basement warm and the cabinent under the sink open when dealing with abnormal cold.

  
  
  I'm not even in the south, that's the bad part. As for our basement it's unfinished, unused, and the only entrance to it is from outside the house. So keeping the basement warm would require calling in a construction crew.
  
  

  Quote from Cucurbita;1185636:

  You have to keep your house at 50 degrees minimum. This keeps water pipes from freezing. Whatever methods you find will be cheaper than fixing the damages that will be caused by your whole house flooding.
  
  I made it through the last three winters without much heat, but the heater was always at 55 just in case.
  
  I have some experience with frozen pipes.

  
  
  We don't know what the fuck is wrong with the heating in our house. It NEVER gets warm no matter how long we leave it on. We've had 3 different companies come out and inspect it and they all say the same thing "Nope, nothing wrong with it. That's how it's supposed to run. Forced air heating never gets very warm."
  
  We're usually fine with the kerosene heater we [S]have[/S]had, but it chose last night to die and no stores anywhere near us had any left in stock, I looked around on the internet and the closest one I could find was in another state.
  
  
  

  Quote from Osayidan;1185639:

  I've never tried this but wouldn't turning off the main water valve of your house and then draining the pipes (just turn on all the taps for a bit) prevent this? I assume if there's no water in the pipes then they won't explode when water freezes and expands in them, but I'm not a plumber so I don't know if doing that causes other problems (other than having no running water),

  
  
  Other than having no water, no I don't think it would damage anything. Had we known it was going to explode we probably would have put on 5-6 pairs of clothes and went outside to the basement to shut the valve off.
• Campylobacter jejuni wrote on 2014-01-08 13:50
  No, it doesn't do anything other than that. We've had to do it when the plumber was working because we also had a suspected damage, but it turned out to be false alarm. We had it off for two days. You may just ask a plumber about long-term issues of course.
• Odin wrote on 2014-01-08 19:01

  Quote from Osayidan;1185639:

  I've never tried this but wouldn't turning off the main water valve of your house and then draining the pipes (just turn on all the taps for a bit) prevent this? I assume if there's no water in the pipes then they won't explode when water freezes and expands in them, but I'm not a plumber so I don't know if doing that causes other problems (other than having no running water),

  
  
  This can be done, but it isn't perfect. When a house is going to be left unheated for the winter, the water system is turned off and drained back to the inlet.
  
  A food-safe antifreeze is then injected at the water inlet and allowed to flow throughout the system, as well as being poured into all of the drains and toilets to keep the traps from freezing.
  
  When it is going to be used again the system is usually rinsed out and then flushed with vinegar to clear the residue of the antifreeze.
  
  Also, those contractors sound like they don't know what they are dealing with. Unless you have a heat-pump system or a drafty house, forced air systems will get very warm very fast. I've never had problems making output on the gas or oil fired forced air systems I've worked with, they give a very noticable output and temperature rise. If it doesn't there is either a broken plenum letting the heat escape, or a clogged exchanger.
  
  Heat pumps don't work at all in extreme cold. They are really only any good at all in in-between season conditions, when it is warm out but not quite warm enough.
• Froglord of DESTINY!!! wrote on 2014-01-08 19:05
  The weather where I live is pretty stagnant all year round, it's always between 10 ~ 20 degrees all year round. We only had 2 days of actual snow, and it all melted 3 hours later from a downpour of rain because the pollution and the pacific winds jacked the temperature up to mid-spring levels.
  
  The only downside is that we see more rain than actual sun, so it makes buying running shoes a bitch since they wear out faster from decaying in constant moisture.
• Campylobacter jejuni wrote on 2014-01-09 02:36

  Quote from Odin;1185823:

  Also, those contractors sound like they don't know what they are dealing with. Unless you have a heat-pump system or a drafty house, forced air systems will get very warm very fast. I've never had problems making output on the gas or oil fired forced air systems I've worked with, they give a very noticable output and temperature rise. If it doesn't there is either a broken plenum letting the heat escape, or a clogged exchanger.

  
  Or they know very well but don't feel like doing any additional work for some reason.