Any "Plumbers" amongst us?

[wombat457]

Sounds like a plan Chet and not that hard to do. Probably the hardest part of that will be getting hold of the 2 X 2's for the framing. Might have to take a drive into town tomorrow and talk to a new company that does siding etc. Might e easier to have them do it so long as they can will build it the way you described.

 

[whowey]

I spent most of last winter living in my camper while I was working on a gas fired power plant in northern Illinois. The temperature got down to as low as -31° with MANY nights and days below 0°. I had my water hose laying on the ground during this time and never had it freeze up. I did have a problem once with the hydrant where it came out of the ground because I didn't have it insulated well enough. I was able to thaw it out with a hair dryer but I ruined my heat tape because I got the wire (tape) to hot. I couldn't see it in the dark and the wind was screaming and I was shivering and cussing. Long story short, I got the next to last piece of heat tape in Sterling, IL and redid it the right way. I prefer the tape that has the thermostat exposed to the open air with a light that comes on to show that it's working. These will come on when the ambient temperature is around 40° and it's very easy to tell if they're working ..........no light and the temp is below freezing, bad heat tape.

I've lived in that area up by the nuke station for 30 years. Last year was the worst cold since I've been alive. The city mains were freezing in some areas. Ours did. Left the faucet open to keep the supply lines to the house running and the main under the street freezes...

And Wombat.. I spent part of yesterday in our crawlspace thawing the pipes to my kitchen. Luckily ours is copper and galvanized pipe... so its propane torch for me. G/L man. Its the one job I hate every winter.

 

[whowey]

I did some work for one of the mobile homes in the park here. She had special insulation ordered that had the framing boards inserted into the foam already. All I had to do for her was cut it in the correct sizes and nail it in place around her base. Then cut the vinyl siding pieces to cover them up. Worked really nicely and looked quite good when I finished it.

 

[Cletus]

I am a veteran of many mobile home freezing incidents. In almost every case the problems were localized flaws in insulation or sealing. In my current place, a raccoon dug multiple tunnels. It would be nasty to remove the plastic and fix that, so I added extra insulation underneath. I still have more to do: on a warm day, I'm going to seal where the pipes penetrate the floor (under sinks, etc.) with expanding foam. Each one of those openings is a chimney drawing cold air up along the pipe.

During a very cold spell, there was a freeze deep inside the wall where Mrs. Raccoon had been.I own a transformer that lets me make lots of current at 1 or 2 volts. We have copper pipes, so I passed current from one accessible pipe to another until it thawed. Some plumbers have devices made for the purpose.

My last place was older, and insulation would occasionally fall from the bottom. This only caused a crisis when a pipe was exposed. Every time it was only a square inch or two of pipe exposed.

Insulating the crawlspace will require crawl height x 2 x length x width of your house= a whole bunch. If you can figure out where the pipes run, you can save quite a bit on insulation. The only pain is attaching it to the existing stuff.

 

[montanan]

Any water running yet ???

 

[wombat457]

Chet,

Got it back late last night, early this morning mate. Not all of it, but at least the main things like the Showers, Toilets and Washing Machine. It is getting there slowly.

The next few days are suppose to be warmer, or at least not as cold, so we are hopeful of getting it all back by the end of the weekend. Once back - ALL taps will be dripping.

I intend to pay a local (but new) Siding Business a visit and see what can be done about enclosing the crawl space, and looking into replacing the heat tapes as well, making sure they cover ALL of the lines, not just a section of them.

Everyone has been great with advice on this and I am appreciative of all of that advice. I am a little "contagious" of the cold, so if I can get someone else to make those suggestions happen, I will as I'd like to get it done now when it is needed if possible.