late (too late) winterizing of water faucets: 24F, can't open outside faucet

[Home Guy]

mike unnecessarily full quoted:

Yes, that was stupid.

The home-owner or jobber-grade plumbing torch is still the first tool of choice for thawing outside water valves and copper lines.

If it's a brick-sided house, with a water faucet sticking out 6 inches through a hole in the bricks, you're not going to set the house on fire

- even if the valve has a film of wd-40 on it.

I'll take the torch first, hairdryer-in-a-bucket second, and boiling water dribbled into a small towel third.

The only way to drain an outside spiggot is by closing the inside valve and then opening the outside valve. If the outside piping is full of frozen water, then how the hell are you going to drain it?

How the hell can you have an outside water valve that's a foot *inside* the wall? How thick are the walls of your home anyways? How exactly do you reach a valve that's a foot *inside* your exterior wall? How do you attach a garden hose?

[DerbyDad03]

re: "How the hell can you have an outside water valve that's a foot

*inside* the wall?"

[Vic Smith]

Nowhere near 2000 if waved over the faucet.

I've got no problem with that advice. Personally I'd just use the torch on mine. Brick walls. But hot water works. I thawed a car radiator that was blocked with ice at about 0 degrees F by dousing it with a couple gallons of hot water.

--Vic

[aemeijers]

Hide quoted text -

Again, not everybody HAS inside shutoff valves. Everybody should, of course, but not every builder bothers to spend the extra ten bucks. It is on my 'plumber punch list' which I really need to get around to hiring somebody for one of these days.

-- aem sends...

[aemeijers]

Freeze-proof spigot. The actual valve body is inside the heated envelope. Long shaft for the knob, and supposedly self-draining. It is what I will have a plumber install here, one of these days.

[mike]

You might want to reread what I said. In particular, one of my outside faucets goes thru the wall and straight down to the shutoff valve and drain. It is quite possible to drain the pipe without letting air in the outside spigot. Not as easy, but quite possible. IF you want proof, open a bottle of yuppie water and turn the bottle upside down. I betcha you can't keep the pop from draining out.

[Noahbuddy]

[jamesgangnc]

Your advice is pretty lousy.

They are talking abut valves with a long shaft and the actual valve seat is some distance down the pipe. The come in lengths from about 4 inches all the way up to a foot.

On an ordinary valve the plastic seals will melt long before the solder joint melts if you are heating the valve from the outside with a propane torch. The solder joint is going to be behind the bib and in the wall.

[Home Guy]

Some of the material in that web-article is horse shit:

There is no way that a "piping hot" machine qualifies in the top-5 ways to thaw an outside faucet. Never even heard of such a crazy-ass gadget before. Who sells it - Ron Popeel via TV infomercial?

I'm sure every home-owner is going to remember that, next time it's 6 pm and below freezing outside and they realize they need to winterize their outdoor faucets.

For those home-owners that do industrial-strength heat-shrinking at home, naturally they're going to pull out their heat gun and point it at their frozen faucet. Makes sense to me.

Here we go. This one is #3 on this so-call "top-5" list.

Yes, because when it's freezing outside, there's nothing better I want to do than the shlep to the nearest home depot and spend $50 for a heat-tape kit and then work my freezing fingers off installing it, turn it on, and then hope that by next week my faucet will be thawed.

Heat tape is for pipes that must carry flowing water in freezing conditions, not for thawing a pipe full of frozen water that was not winterized.

Number 5 on the list.

This list does not seem to be specifically geared to address the problem of the frozen outside spiggot - which I would think would be the most common frozen-pipe issue that people would have.

[Home Guy]

My advice to use a plumbing torch to thaw an outside faucet is lousy? What's your advice then smart-ass?

I don't know when new homes started to be built with those, but obviously the OP doesn't have one of those types of valves (or if he does, he doesn't know it).

It slipped my mind that they exist - anyone saying that their water valve is 1-foot inside their wall was technically correct, but it would have been more useful to say that they have a deep-reach or long-shaft exterior faucet.

I've installed (soldered) traditional gate and ball-type water valves around my home without taking them apart first, and they operate fine after installation. They either have high-temperature rubber or teflon. My exterior back-yard house faucet is a manifold of 3 lever-operated ball valves (they are quieter than gate valves) and none of their internal gaskets melted as a result of heat during soldering.

[Home Guy]

aemeijers used bad usenet style when improperly full-quoting:

Tell me where in the US / Canada, in climate zones that regularly experience sub-zero weather, do they build homes that don't include interior shut-off valves for exterior faucets (or where they don't install long-reach exterior valves) ?

[jamesgangnc]

He's not going to be heating it where the pipe solders into the valve behind the bib. If there is water in it he will never be able to unsolder it. He's going to be heating it from the outside and the other poster is corrrect, he should not put the torch flame on the stem or the packing nut. Yes they do have high temp plastic but you still don't want to put a torch on it. Ideally he would use the torch in the area at the bottom between the underside of the valve stem and the bib. The water enters the actual valve from the bottom on most common outdoor faucets.

A few minutes with a heat gun or a high powered hair dryer pointed at the bottom will achieve the same thing and is completely safe. Its not as if we're trying to come up with a high speed assembly line here, he's already spent a bunch of time trying penetrating oil on it. Not to mention just about everyone has access to a hair dryer and not nearly so many people have propane or mapp torchs.

As for manly I'll raise you and say I can unfreeze it in under 5 seconds with my oxy/act and a rosebud but I'm still more likely to use my heat gun.

I prefer the long stem valves myself but I know that in NC and VA I have owned multiple houses that did not have them and also did not have an interior shutoff valve. Buliders are cheap.

[chaniarts]

what, you didn't get to redoing the entire kitchen whilst you're at it? this is called mission creep.

[DerbyDad03]

Earlier today, Should-Be-In-A-Home Guy spouted:

There are lots of other reasons for a home-owner to have a heat-gun aside from "industrial-strength heat-shrinking". I'd wager that the majority of home-owners that have a heat gun use it for a variety of those other reasons. I know I do.

[aemeijers]

Well, in the case of this house at least, I'm pretty sure they were part of a previous-owner and buddies self-install, like most of the addition apparently was. Backyard spigot is currently a quarter-turn ball valve, with pipe just poked through wall. I'm pretty sure original footprint of house had 1 outside spigot on a wall that no longer exists due to addition. Basement ceiling looks like copper spaghetti in spots.

Lotsa entry-level houses were built in 50s and 60s with nothing that was not required by code.

-- aem sends...

[Home Guy]

jamesgangnc unnecessarily full-quoted:

He should pass the torch flame over the entire length of exposed pipe and the valve - no reason not to.

Exactly, which means he'll never get it so hot that he'll melt any internal plastic seals - regardless where he points it (including the top of the valve / packing nut).

Totally depends on ambient external air temperature and wind. I can easily see how a cold breeze could make it futile to use a heat gun or hair dryer - without setting up a shield around it.

[Home Guy]

Can you name one?

[Ed Pawlowski]

No imagination?

Defrost a freezer faster Dry a spill Unfreeze a door lock

Can't say I've used one often and a hair dryer does about the same.

[aemeijers]

Stripping thick buildups of old paint. Removing old-style floor tile from concrete floors. Spot-drying wet things to see where a leak is. Installing old-style auto/refrig door seals.

I could probably think of more, but admittedly the uses are mostly rather retro by modern standards.

[Home Guy]

Yes, I'd believe that someone would buy a heat gun for a project like that.

Can't see that as being more effective than a tile-scraper.

Can't see a home-owner buying a heat gun specifically for that.

Can't see a home-owner buying a heat gun specifically for that.

Can't see that as being a typical or common home-owner project.

Other than for paint stripping, or exterior / below-grade electrical projects using heat-shrink tubing, I can't see a heat gun in the tool chest of the average home-owner.