How fast can you freeze a floor?

Kevin O. Pulver

Leave it to you to have a practical idea.
I appreciate you all responding. I'm less ignorant than I was a couple days ago. As Ben Franklin reportedly said:
"Experience is a dear(costly) school, but a fool will learn at no other." Well every one on the Wall is trying to learn from THIS school, the lessons guys learned at the OTHER school. I guess that's one school you never graduate
from and someone may learn from the hard lesson I just had.
You've all made it easier for me, Thanks again, Kevin

Kevin O. Pulver

Boy do I feel stupid.

Kevin O. Pulver

Boy do I feel stupid.

Have you ever done it?
It's a beatiful new show home under construction. Electrician who wired my panel was a real artist. I will post pix later. Got the Knight 210 fired at 3:00 A.M. to warm the basement for now. They called back a couple days later. They LOVE it, and wanted to bring the garage on-line for the sheet-rockers to work in.
I went over with my high-head pump and bucket, purge and filled the 4 loops (200'of 1/2" in the garage (100% water), went downstairs to wire a couple things and had the zone circ running in maybe 15 to 30 minutes. I seemed to be getting good hot supply and ice cold returns and figured it was flowing. When I checked back in a 1/2 hour or so I had nothing. I figured air lock somehow. I thought about Dan's books while I bled the leaders and got no air, (NOT an air problem) and then Isolated the 4 loop manifolds , put a pressure test guage on one side, purge pump on the other of supply manifold, return manifold had a hose into a bucket. 45 PSI and NOT ONE DROP flowing through loops. Now the dim lights are getting brighter. I notice the spilled water on the floor has already frozen (It's hovering near zero outside and not much warmer in the garage I suppose)
I remember noticing a few hose shaped ice chips in the bucket when I was purging but figured it had flushed out of my fill hoses which had been out in the truck.
MY THEORY: The core of the slab had enough cold to start freezing a thin shell of water in the tube when I let it sit for those few minutes. When I got the zone circ running, the warm water broke the ice off and it flushed along into it dammed up somewhere and then it froze solid when it had no flow. I've seen half frozen garden hoses start flowing water and then shut off immediately when the ice breaks loose. What do you think guys? Could it happen that fast? It seems to have done it. It's now either wait until warmer weather or point a BIG space heater at the concrete for a long time huh? Thanks, and be glad it's not you! :-) Kevin P.S. FYI We have 1/2" "low-E" brand slab-shield flexible closed cell foam/foil/foam under the slab.

[Deleted User]

Oh sure....

One of my rookies trried to fill a slab that was below zero last year, seized up on him, and we lost tubes in the floor to freeze breaks. We had to eat it. Had to jack hammer the slab up and replace it. Hope you don't get so unlucky.

They do make a portable hydronic oil fired boiler with 1000 feet of hose on a reel. They rent them. I think this would be faster than a blast furnace.

http://www.groundthaw.com/

G'Luck

ME

Maine Ken

Had one last year been below zero for over a week. used glycol. return temp for two full days was below freezing. once they are cold they do take awhile to warm up!!!!!

Good luck.

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Tom R.

Ice in floor

Any time you have OS temp below 14 deg. you can freeze anything in 15 minutes. Lost one phase in a building once. Was out for maybe 8 -10 minutes. Three phase heating pumps tripped - FAN COIL MOTORS DIDN'T. 180 deg. water froze solid in that time. Sides of the building looked like Niagra Falls in winter when it thawed. "You get older, you get smarter."

Weezbo

Takes awhile to bring them back up....

My thought for you is pound heat to the space Asap...like 10 X BTU's to satisfy that heat loss....Electric water bead blankets , weed burners,electric 45K ,herman nelsons 80-> 450K btu...and just pound the heat in...soon as you have flow bag off the heat...the boiler can do its thing....it warmed up to 24 today and i bagged off my X block to get a start on the rough in....and energize another slab(the key is nowhere to be found) the anti freeze is out side Thickening up for when i do have the Key:) My Pump should like that :)lives with me about a year and the poor thing is ready to DIE ...:)))

rich pickering

Glad I'm not the only one.

20 stinking minutes, froze solid. 100 pounds of propane and a 150,000 btu construction heater and the slab was thawed with no leaks.

Left the walk in door cracked, co was 1ppm, temp at ceiling was 135 and o2 was 18.9%. What is the safe limit for co2?

hr

Build your own thawmaster

the guys at my old company thawed a snowmelt drive a couple years back.

The HO went to K mart and bought up all the garden hose they had, spread it on the driveway. They covered it with InsulTarp and connected it to the exixiting boiler.

They used an old indirect they had in the shop to interface the home boiler to the temperary melt (glycol)system.

Watts Onix would work, but garden hose is cheap and usually available.

hot rod

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