Well, my humor kicked back in today after that fiasco yesterday. Here's a sort of 'lesson learned' for any other home owners (or even renters who don't want to be disrupted and don't mind a small simple job).
- Main mistake- we forgot to test the pipe heaters this winter. They had quit working due to simple age and corrosion.
- Secondary mistake, we ignored the lack of insulation in the garage and washer room.
Our bad ;-( When it dropped to 24F, the pipe to the washing machine which runs through the garage then over the top and back down an exterior wall, split in 3 places. Copper pipe. Those of you who live 'southerly' like us, are just starting to get the below 32F temps at night for long enough to matter. Due to location, leaving a few sinks dripping, probably would not have helped this one.
Ok, the fix is easy and would have been very cheap (less than 100$ if we'd caught it before any pipes split). It's also fast to do.
Remove old insulation back far enough to check the pipe heater. Pipe heaters are long thin heavy plastic coated wires with a plug at one end and they heat up just a touch to keep a pipe above freezing. Mine actually have little thermostats in them to cut on when the ambient temp hits about 40F (adjustable). A ten foot run took 1 20ft unit as it doubles back to cover the other pipe (one hot, one cold, about 2 inches apart). The plug on mine 'lights up' when it's heating. If in doubt, these are cheap to replace at
20$ each.If needing to replace, just remove all the old insulation back to the wall of the interior of the house, and use electrical tape to secure a new pipe heater run along the pipe. Then, wrap the whole thing with insulation. You can use precut black foam tubes to make this really fast, or you can use the wrap around insulation. The precut tubing is what we will use for the one pipe we now know should still be covered (and isnt but we now have a heater in the garage). That one pipe is visible so it will look nicer that way and provide protection if we forget to turn on the heater.
Anyways, hopefully this will help any others who didnt know about such, to avoid the mistake we just made.