Thread: Winter Water Pipes Question - Help a Southern Boy

Originally Posted by planeden

Thanks STF.

My water is still of, but i am still counting myself lucky for having both electricity and natural gas. And the up side, if I don't have water in the pipes, it can't freeze, right? .

It is looking like Friday we will be out of the freeze and everything will start to thaw.

We are keeping a close eye on our old people. Luckily my neighbors aren't to the point that they think I am an old person that needs checking up on. They just think I am the kook that was out shoveling snow in my t-shirt .

Ha, you and me both. The Canadians are all bundled up and I'm clearing snow in a t-shirt and my jellies. Dry cold doesn't feel cold to me, in England I could clear my windscreen with a credit card but it felt so much colder. That damp cold takes ages to warm up from.

I did an interesting search [at least to me] today.

Here in the Minneapolis/St Paul MN area the frost is 16 to 30 inches deep.

Not to far into Wisconsin they are saying only 4".

A coworker brought up today that a common saying here of 20 below meaning -20'f is not understood many other places.

I understand our frost level is between 3 and 4 ft in a normal season.
I've dealt with serious frost levels in Moscow Idaho when I was younger. I ran an excavator and hauled dirt. Digging foundations for new homes. Chopping at the ground with a big Excavator to break through the frost. After you got through then it pulled up in huge chunks. Hard to pile that kind of dirt up. Takes much more space. I had fun running heavy equipment to it got boring staring at the same hole for days.

This company has some products to prevent water line freezing.

https://heatline.com/

Bob

Originally Posted by Gasman

I understand our frost level is between 3 and 4 ft in a normal season.
I've dealt with serious frost levels in Moscow Idaho when I was younger. I ran an excavator and hauled dirt. Digging foundations for new homes. Chopping at the ground with a big Excavator to break through the frost. After you got through then it pulled up in huge chunks. Hard to pile that kind of dirt up. Takes much more space. I had fun running heavy equipment to it got boring staring at the same hole for days.

Many people don't understand how extreme the weather is in Colorado Springs from -22°F in Feb to 110° in July and what many call a Hurricane on the coasts we just call "Wind" in CO.. I mean really you haven't lived till you have Thunder Snow LOL

I kind of laughed when I moved up here to North ID as it is down right Temperate in comparison

Originally Posted by 32t

I did an interesting search [at least to me] today.

Here in the Minneapolis/St Paul MN area the frost is 16 to 30 inches deep.

Not to far into Wisconsin they are saying only 4".

A coworker brought up today that a common saying here of 20 below meaning -20'f is not understood many other places.

Snow insulates.
Here in Ohio, I believe were required to bury waterlines, no less than 3 feet deep..

I have a shallow well, and the line comes thru the basement wall, approximately 4 ' below the surface.

House was built over 100 years ago.

Originally Posted by 32t

I did an interesting search [at least to me] today.

Here in the Minneapolis/St Paul MN area the frost is 16 to 30 inches deep.

Not to far into Wisconsin they are saying only 4".

A coworker brought up today that a common saying here of 20 below meaning -20'f is not understood many other places.

You are probably right.

Funny thing, I was bought up with Pounds, Shillings & Pence until I was 7. It was a strange day when the teacher said that everything we had been learning about money we had to forget and this new Decimal money we will learn instead.

I still don't really get centimeters, grams or kilometers, my mind works in feet and lbs.

But for all that, I have no idea what Fahrenheit is. For me 0 is freezing, my house is 22 in the winter and 24 in the summer. Right now it's -7 outside and I will be clearing snow at 7.30 when it gets light.

Originally Posted by STF

You are probably right.

Funny thing, I was bought up with Pounds, Shillings & Pence until I was 7. It was a strange day when the teacher said that everything we had been learning about money we had to forget and this new Decimal money we will learn instead.

I still don't really get centimeters, grams or kilometers, my mind works in feet and lbs.

But for all that, I have no idea what Fahrenheit is. For me 0 is freezing, my house is 22 in the winter and 24 in the summer. Right now it's -7 outside and I will be clearing snow at 7.30 when it gets light.

I was in the U.K. when the conversion to decimal currency came in. Store had two sets of cash registers set up for each type of currency as they were taking the old bills out of circulation. It was confusing for people who had to carry two different types of money.

Some of the grocers were having a time of it as well and were selling “decimal dozen” eggs. Don’t know if that was a prank or a scam.

Back to temperature. We have a place in eastern Ontario not far from Ottawa. Temperature can range from -40°C to 30+°C from winter low to summer peak. We draw our water from a lake rather than a well and use an electrically heated intake line. One winter our septic leeching field froze - the frost had gone below 4 feet and the stuff had frozen in the pipes. Digging out a septic tank lid at -40 in winter was not fun.

Originally Posted by DZEC

Back to temperature. We have a place in eastern Ontario not far from Ottawa. Temperature can range from -40°C to 30+°C from winter low to summer peak. We draw our water from a lake rather than a well and use an electrically heated intake line. One winter our septic leeching field froze - the frost had gone below 4 feet and the stuff had frozen in the pipes. Digging out a septic tank lid at -40 in winter was not fun.

I live in northwestern Ontario and our temperatures have a similar range, -40C/-40F to +35C/+95F. The City of Thunder Bay requires that the minimum depth a water pipe is buried to is 7 Feet/2.1 Meters. As always deeper is better. As mentioned earlier, the deeper the snow cover early in the season the less the frost will penetrate.

Yea, septic fields can be a pita when it is really cold. The chemical reaction slows down in the cold allowing the sewage to freeze. IIRC, we used to add yeast to keep the chemical process active and generating heat to stop freezing. There are other chemicals you can add too, to do the same thing.

Also mentioned earlier was Thunder Snow. The weather conditions that create that have occurred in various places in Canada and around the world. I don't think it is a common occurrence and have never personally never experienced it.

Bob

Originally Posted by DZEC

I was in the U.K. when the conversion to decimal currency came in. Store had two sets of cash registers set up for each type of currency as they were taking the old bills out of circulation. It was confusing for people who had to carry two different types of money.

Some of the grocers were having a time of it as well and were selling “decimal dozen” eggs. Don’t know if that was a prank or a scam.

Back to temperature. We have a place in eastern Ontario not far from Ottawa. Temperature can range from -40°C to 30+°C from winter low to summer peak. We draw our water from a lake rather than a well and use an electrically heated intake line. One winter our septic leeching field froze - the frost had gone below 4 feet and the stuff had frozen in the pipes. Digging out a septic tank lid at -40 in winter was not fun.

I didn't know that there were two tills at that time, I was 7 so don't remember that.

There is definitely not a decimal dozen, a dozen was always a dozen unless it was a bakers dozen of course.

What were you doing in England at that time to be there long enough to have lived through the conversion?

The temperature here in Kingsville doesn't go very low but gets very hot . Kingsville is the southernmost town in Canada, we're south of northern California but when I lived in Elliot Lake between Sudbury and the Soo it got damn cold.