Originally Posted by
Malsua
The cold is a coming!
Ryan, read what I wrote below, perhaps you want to rethink your "turn the furnace down".
Several tips.
1. If you have vulnerable heating pipes, make sure those zones runs at least every 30 minutes. A corollary to that; turn your heat up. If you run it at 67, turn it up to 72. Yes, it will cost you money and yes the furnace may run constantly. That's the point. Depending on how your furnace is configured, it may be possible to run the zones even when the furnace is not running, if so, go lock the zone valves open. Running water is much harder to freeze.
2. If you have faucets or toilet lines that are at risk, run 'em. Drip your faucets. My kitchen is on pillars and the water pipes run under the floor, above the ground and while we've closed up the space with plastic, it's still outside. Before we wrapped and heat-taped the pipes, we dripped the water. It works. As a side note, this particular area was my introduction to PEX. Pex pipes are plastic that can freeze solid and not burst. After fixing the copper that burst on nights we forgot to drip the water, I found pex and replaced all of it. Even when it did freeze, I was able to thaw it, no damage done.
3. If you have a toilet that freezes, buy some RV anti-freeze and dump it in the tank and the bowl. Don't use that flush away the anti-freeze until the crisis has passed. If you need the toilet, rig the float to never shut off. Every toilet is different, but use string, a weight, whatever to make it never shut off. One way is to simply put something under the flap. If you need to use the toilet, remove item from flap, fill it, flush it and keep the flap open again. This also has the benefit of running water through the lines from your tank/main.
4. Finally, if you have cold rooms, go buy some shrink film for some of the windows. This is the stuff you stick on and use a hair dryer to shrink tight. Before my renovation, we had old casement windows that you could see through. If we didn't use the film, snow would blow in. Waking up at 2am with snow on your face and bed was not fun. Ask me how I know.
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