[SOLVED] trickle faucet?

[james]

In the winter I want to turn on my faucets a trickle to prevent pipes from freezing. However, faucets are not designed to meter small amounts of water flow, so it is tricky to let out small amounts of water from both hot and cold sides. It's even trickier for single handle faucets -- they are not balanced with small amount of water flow, so centering the handle does not let out equal amounts of hot/cold water. And the hardest is to make everyone do this after using the faucets.

Are there special faucets to help ease this task? Ideally this special faucet would be separate from the regular faucet, have adjustable flow rate independent from the on/off valve, and can be installed under the sink and drain into the P trap without a dripping sound.

I did not find such device on the web, perhaps because I don't know what it is called.

[Joe]

Time to quit fooling around and freeze proof your domicile. It isn't expensive nor difficult, so head to your local Ace hardware, box store, and survey the heat tapes, insulation, other commonly used materials. If the place is really hopeless, maybe you don't want to waste the money. Find a better house, trailer or shed.

Joe

[mike]

What's your estimate of the expense of such a project including the permits, electrician work to get power to the heat tapes, patching the drywall you had to remove to gain access to pipes, removing/replacing insulation, asbestos abatement, etc.? Feel free to itemize.

I had interesting conversations with two weatherization consultants and a weatherization contractor. They all believed that insulating pipes keeps them from freezing. All pipe insulation does is slow down the freezing process. Insulation elsewhere that results in raising the temperature around the pipes above the freezing point is required. Heat tape can do that, IF it's working. If it quits working due to age, loss of power etc. you can be fat dumb and happy while your pipes are breaking.

so head to your local Ace hardware, box

[ShadowTek]

I hate those typical single-handle faucets. I replace them with gooseneck, two-handled, leavered faucents whenever I have the chance.

If your faucet isn't cooperative, can't you just leave the faucet open and choke down the shutoff valves to the faucet? Those might give you more metered control.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Balance that with the cost of repairing the freeze-ups. To replace the split tubing you'd have to do most of what is listed above, plus, perhaps, abate the water damage. You can fix it properly for the life of the house, or you can to temporary work arounds and hope it never fails.

Since none of us has seen the entire setup, none of us can give a valid estimate to fix it the right way. It may be very simple, really.

[dgk]

You can have my kitchen faucet. It's been leaking and it's an old Delta and I can't figure out how to get it to stop. I'll have to take another look at it but it may just be time to get a new one.