Forced hot water and frozen pipes

[subdude]

We recently converted a one car garage to a family room with forced hot water heat. We live in New England last year we had some frozen heating pipes in the room during a real arctic blast -5 a hair dryer did the trick. During the summer we had our contractor insulate the entire area of the baseboard heat and he used some Glycol in the Zone for the room. Well wouldn't you know this past weekend when it was -5 again we had frozen pipes luckily I was able to tackle it with a hair dryer. But if he used Glycol in the heating system why did the pipes freeze? I went to the source and poured some water from the return pipe to the zone in a jar and the water was clear shouldn't the water be the color of the antifreeze which is red? With an even colder blast of air due in for the end of the week I know the chances of the pipe freezing is high any suggestions?

thx

[Mark Jerde]

Assuming a separate thermostat for the family room and the family room attached to the house, when it is cold: - Turn up the thermostat in the family room to 75 or 80 degrees - Open the door to the house. That ought to keep hot water flowing...

... till you get the antifreeze mixture figured out.

-- Mark

[HeatMan]

All antifreeze in not green.

Your contractor should have given you the info about the product he put in your system. Call and ask him.

In the meantime, get a cheapy antifreeze tester for the auto parts house and check it yourself.

[RB]

Hopefully he use propylene glycol (non-toxic) which isn't normally dyed. Ethylene glycol (automobile antifreeze) is usually dyed. The next question is how much did he add. The suggestion already made, to get a tester and determine what you have is a good one. The contractor may not have added enough. My guess is that you need close to 50% propylene glycol.

RB

subdude wrote:

[calhoun]

I don't know how he could add glycol to just that zone since all the fluid circulates though the same boiler. If he calculated the mix for just that zone than there is not enough glycol.

[news.verizon.net]

I did some follow up talked to my contracotr and he imformed that that the plumber used 15 gallons of anti-freeze but last week I went to all our heaters and bled the lines and man was there alot of air in the lines so is there a chance that due to all the air in the lines that not enough anti-freeze was used? I took that jar of water from the return zone put it outside and it was frozen within in hr so there definetely isn't enough anti-freeze in the line.