How to thaw rubber hose ??

ScottMP

Both have heatway black onxy rubber tubing. They are baseboard and both ahev runs that are frozen in the floor.

These means a cutting of floors or sheetrock and a major cashextamie for the home owner.

We have used our HotShot electric thawing machine with great success the last couple of days, but no luck on these jobs.

Also could one of you explain to me why the current will flow thru a copper pipe, but not the ice ?? Water is such a great conducter, what am I missing.

Scott " man my toes are cold" Milne

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hot_rod

Messy but

I once thawed a 6" cast irfon sewer line in an underground parking garage. I used a 1/4" copper tube connected to a bunch of loops wrapped around my LP mushroom heater.

Never moved so fast in all my life when the ice plug came my way!!

Wonder how much current that aluminum wrap in Onix would take??!!

On the plus side, it probably will not burst like copper would.

Figure on a way to blow heat into the spaces is all I come up with. Get some of those big carpet drying blowers somewhere.

hot rod

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zeb_3

Thaw

I had a similar situation. I ran the first floor zone w/ t-stat all the way up. Heat finally penetrated sheetrock and thawed lines. On another job, 1 zone up & downstairs we ran a salamander to heat house. Did not smell good but alot easier than rippin' out sheetrock.

C Kaplan

defrosting that hidden plastic line

I am not sure of the diameter of your line, but this worked for me when I frose the line on my own house running from the well, under the driveway and into the basement.

I used a 5 gal bucket, and immersion heater (like a big fish tank heater), and a small pond pump hooked up to some small tubing.

Cut into the frozen line some place easy to get to.

Place the bucket beneath the cut, insert the heater, a few gallons of water and the pump.

Insert the hose from the pump into the frozen pipe.

Push it until it hits the ice block.

Turn on the pump.

Every once and a while push the pump tube in further, and eventually you will work past the ice blockage.

Basically, the water, warmed by the immersion heater hits the ice, melts a little of it and rolls back down the pipe and into the bucket.

The heater keeps this water warm and the pump keeps sending it back to wear away at the ice.

Hope this helps, it worked for me.

-CK

ScottMP

Using Pex

We had a frozen drain line the other day and did the same idea. Used 10.5 pex tubing hooked up to the hot water heater and fished it up the line.

We also told ALL our freeze customers to CRANK up the heat. This one place still has frozen hose.

The customer want to wait untill it thaws.

See you in April !!

Scott

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JimGPE_3

BTW - Water is a truly lousy conductor of electricity. Water with some ions in it (salt, disolved metals, etc.) does better, but pure water is very bad. I can't imagine ice transmits electricity at all. That may be why.

You can stand in pure water with a 120 volt hot wire in your hand and do just fine.... But the key word is "pure." Don't bet your life on its purity!!!

John Ruhnke1

Great idea!

I like that. I will have to remember this one.

JR

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Unknown

Scott,

Did you use a backflow preventer?


Hehehehehe

ScottMP

No

And his radiant floor smells.....

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Dave (Canada)

frozen water lines

Temp up here has been around -35f to -12f and I was wondering if someone out here could explain the basics to me as to how the different thaw systems work to thaw copper in house, and 11/4 inch plastic intake lines from a lake source.
My neighbour has frozen lines in the house and outside, and over a beer we were tossing around the diferent ideas as to what tools you guys use and how they operate.
The lake line is wrapped with heatcable and insulated. Thanks all, great site for info,
Dave