What is glowing in the basement?

[micky]

A friend is in her basement and talking to me on the phone and she notices that a pipe connected to her heat pump is glowing red. !!!

It's an expensive house built about 10 years ago.

She's sent me two pictures.

One is of two parallel 2-inch white plastic pipes next to each other that are going horizontally across the ceiling, have right angle curves that point the pipes up, have 2 or 3-inch straight pieces, then right angle curves that point through the wall to the outside of the basement

You can see a floor joist from the floor above and the silver-colored insulation on the inside of her basement wall.

(Do they now enclose the high and low pressure AC hoses in PVC pipes like this? That's what it seems like it is.) The AC was on yesterday, but it wasn't that hot out (90) and it shouldn't have been running that much. The house has an AC at each end of the house.

(It's a royal pain for me to post the pictures. )

The second picture from her phone is darker, perhaps underexposed, but the more I look at it the more I can see. It shows the nearer 2 or

3-inch straight piece and the entire thing is glowing red!!!! You can see some red color reflecting off the silver insulation. (Above and below are the curved sections, and they each have as thicker section where they mate with the end of the straight pieces, and those sections show as black bands at the top and bottom of the 2 or 3 inches, even though in the first picture they are the same color, white.)

She could see it glowing with the lights on in the basement, plus sunlight coming in the sliding glass door. Then the glowing got less by the time she sent me these pictures. What is glowing??????

I told her before she bought the house that it had demons, but she bought it anyhow. This is the first clear example that they are there. Can they be exorcised or is she stuck with them?

[trader_4]

Not that I've ever seen, that's for sure. The lines are copper tubing, less than 1" not 2", covered in black foam insulation on the low pressure side and how can PVC glow? No idea what you're looking at.

[gfretwell]

Sounds like a light behind a PVC pipe lighting it up.

[micky]

Okay. Just like my house that's 40 years old.

She also has a backup generator. I don't see why they would use PVC pipe, or two of them, but....????

She has solar panels in the yard, but again, why PVC and why two?

She has some other gizmos too. They first owner was an architect who was into gizmos.

Good question.

Maybe the demons are decorating early for Halloween.

She lives fairly far away. Maybe I'll get her to show me where the pipes go, or maybe I'll figure out how to post the pictures here. I should learn how to do that. (I signed up for one of those services. I have to figure out which.)

[Pat]

Interesting. When you mentioned 2 PVC pipes, I immediately though about the combustion air lines on a high effeciency gas furnace. I know you said heat pump, but maybe the back-up heat is gas. Regardless, that still doesn't explain the glowing. Sun shining on a nearby section of the pipe is the only answer I read so far that makes sense.

[Jim Beam]

Look at them again when you're sober and maybe you'll figure it out

[micky]

I finally learned how to post something.

Pictures are not in the order I put them in.

Had to get it from my phone to my phone's email to my pc to imgur.

I'll ask but I think her basement door faces east and this happened around 5PM.

[trader_4]

Those pipes are the air intake and exhaust for the furnace. It looks like the sun shining into it from outside. Call the fire dept to be sure. Good grief.

[gfretwell]

I have seen PVC plumbing stacks that looked like neon tubes, just from sunlight coming down them.

[BQ340]

Just looks like sunlight hitting the intake or exhaust pipe where it exits the house wall , the pipe is somewhat translucent.

[micky]

How strange. I guess that's all it was. She's lived there 4 years, spends quite a bit of time in the basement, never saw it before.

Thanks all.

[Pat]

It might only do it a few days per year when the sun lines up just right and it isn't cloudy that day.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Sounds kinky. Does she have an S & M dungeon down there?

[micky]

Oh, of course. Unrelated to where the door is.

So the light comes from inside the pipe. Weird. I don't go there more than once a year. I hope I remember to look at the pipe when I do.

[micky]

Yes, you're right. And most of the time she's down there is on cloudy or rainy days. (She walks outside 4 or 5 days a week, at the mall when it's cold, but sometimes just in the basement.)

I was going to have her get a mural painted on the basement wall that would be like the roads and streets she walks on, plus a recording of traffic and bird and cow noises. But she hasn't done that yet.

I can only come over once a year because she needs notice to clear out the dungeon before I or other visitors get there. She has a service that takes them to someplace in northern New Hampshire. But she doesn't know I know.

[rbowman]

I read about one guy who was practicing for a cross country bicycle ride. He had an exercise bicycle in the basement and would go down and ride it for hours in the dark. Said he was getting ready for North Dakota.

I like biking but watching the same damn grain silo slowly getting bigger for six or seven hours must suck.

[Don Wiss]

Exactly. I don't know much about heat pumps. It is too cold where I am to use them. But those PVC pipes look like the furnace is a high-effciency direct-vent unit.

Don.

(e-mail link at home page bottom).

[trader_4]

Can't be high efficiency, those pipes are glowing red.

[Dean Hoffman]

Yeahbut. Glowing hot pvc pipes would melt and deform.

[trader_4]

Duh.. Wooosh!