Karl Denninger has written extensively about the effect of extreme cold on your home's plumbing, heating problems, and related issues. His article is too long to excerpt here, so click over to his place and read it for yourself. Very interesting and useful information.
Stay warm, friends.
Peter
11 comments:
Interesting to know that modern houses do not have the capability of draining the pipes.
We heat with wood because it is what we can afford, which requires us chain sawing trees and the youngster splitting wood by hand. We live in northern Maine, and are shocked that so many around us would freeze without power for a few days. Some folks have propane ovens, and you can turn on the oven and open the oven door and heat the house that way, too. Don't trust the lives of your family on something you can't control, like the grid. Our electrical company guys are first rate, but they are just humans and things like ice storms and sabotage could overwhelm them.
Times are different... Things our parents 'knew' are no longer available... sigh
after moving up into the hills of PA. I spent like 5-6 grand putting in 2 wood stoves. my neighbors thought I was nuts. told me to go with a pellet stove instead. nah. I like wood stoves. about 3 years ago around this time of year even, the power went out for 4-5 days.
yup. ice storms are a stone bitch. well, there where a LOT of generators sold in that time. so much that you had to wait 2 weeks to get one.
not a problem here though. I had 2 or them. one runs on propane and one on gasoline.
heating the house with wood is amazing. nice even heat all through the house. right now it like 4 or something outside and it still a nice 74-5 inside. problem is once people step inside
they don't want to leave ?
one stove is in the basement to keep the floor and PIPES warm. that the big stove like 2400 BTUs and a smaller one up stairs in the living room for when the temp drops like now.
it near the door the dogs go out. helps with the cold air blast when the door is open.
since the last big ice storm, a couple of my neighbors have installed wood stoves.
worse comes to worse, you can gather broken tree branches to burn in a wood stove.
can't do that with a pellet stove. and most of them NEED electric power to run/work.
like Mom told me years ago, :think it thru, what could go wrong, because if it can. it will."
So I crapped in a bucket today. Black water (Septic) line froze up solid after near a week of this cold on my boat. We're iced in, as well, hull is surrounded so... no hiding where the bucket contents are thrown over the side.
'I wanna work on boats' young me said 42 years ago. 'It'll be fun' I said.
Admiral Brown is on the scene.
Same set up here. We’ve looked at houses for sale, since we’re getting old. First thing I would do is put in a woodstove. A pellet stove would be removed immediately.
I’d rather put up with hard work, than live among people, or in an electric everything house.
Southern NH
I prepared for extreme cold in AZ and have been a little disappointed this year. Highs in the low 60s through most of the winter.
RED: house pipe draining. One way around it is get a spare aerator that fits your highest faucet and make an "aerator to air hose" adapter that has a quick disconnect matching your present air hose quick disconnects. Or, make an adapter that attaches to a shower head pipe - standard 1/2" pipe threads (remove the showerhead) because that's probably going to be the highest outlet. Apply about 5-6 PSI. Start opening faucets, highest first. When you start getting just air, close that faucet and move to the next highest. More than about 8 PSI will just bubble through the water, what you want is to push the water through the pipes. When you're done, open all the faucets and bump up the air to 15-20 PSI for a while. Not all the water will be pushed out with the 5-6 PSI, most will, what's left will be in shallow puddles on the bottom of the pipes, pushing air through the pipes for a while will help evaporae those, but the puddles can freeze without damaging the pipe.
Next summer, install a manual drain valve at the lowest accessible point in the plumbing so next winter you can skip the air compressor. (Extra points for adding an insulated vault with that drain valve in your incoming buried water line several feet on your side of the meter (or well) - if the meter freezes and/or the pipe between the meter and water main it's the utilitiy's problem to fix, you own from the output side of the meter into the house. Put a cap on that drain valve outlet to keep dirt and bugs out.)
Side note: PEX can tolerate freezing, it'll expand to accommodate it. However, the plastic connectors in the PEX system may not, brass fittings seem to hold up MUCH better.
Anon January 31, 2026 at 2:12 AM: Why not just put floor vents through from the basement into the house to allow some of that heat to migrate its way upwards?
It is 47°F and raining here in the Pacific NW so we aren't suffering at all (other than the lack of going on motorcycle rides) but I have natural gas heat, a natural gas stove, and two gas generators, plus two propane and one kerosene heater. I can cook when the power goes out, I can theoretically run the furnace although I'd have to do a bit of jury rigging with the wiring and generators. I still need to install a transfer switch, manual because the power rarely goes out and when it does, it's usually only for a couple hours at most.
I built a small house on a couple acres on the plains West of Spokane, WA about 25 miles and designed for the kitchen sink and the bathroom fixtures butt up against an interior wall with a utility closet between the kitchen and bathroom with all my connections in this well insulted closet and installed a high faucet at ceiling height and low faucet drains near the floor to a drain outside and insulated my well connection and had that buries six feet(code for frost was four feet) deep. If I was going to be gone for an extended time or a severe cold spell could drain all my fixtures of water. All my connections and lines were short and the reason on an interior wall was no pipe was on an exterior wall for an uninterrupted insulation except for wiring. I also built with 2X8 studs and used closed cell urethane sprayed insulation. With abundant roof insulation and crawl space insulation I used a small 24" opening airtight wood stove and backup wall mounted radiant heat propane heaters, large one for the house and a small one in the utility closet. I was snug as a bug warm in the winter and cool without AC in the summer. I still wished I had that place, even though it was in Washington...
We have a wood stove in the living room. Sorta in center of house facing living room but inset into end of kitchen counter. We love it, however it is a cheap, 600 dollar Chinese cast iron stove lined with insulation panels inside. It has a adjustable air intake in bottom coming through the ash catcher in the bottom and another at the top. They work so so. the biggest downside is that is a smaller model that I got to fit neatly in the space available. The longest stick of wood you can fit through the openings is 16 inches and that can be iffy.. I cut stuff 15inches or smaller. It's also from bottom to top of firebox nor very large so putting in more than a single layer of wood is difficult. It also draws air from in the house for combustion which pulls all your warm air up the chimney.. It works but not great or efficiently. would wouldn't freeze but a stove that used outside air for combustion and have a larger firebox would be great. Also one like a Franklin stove that had lots of mass to soak up most of the heat and radiate it into the house rather than it going straight up the chimney would be way better.
I really like the rocket stoves with a decent firebox and a huge thermal mass that the hot air goes through designs. Sadly my house isn't designed to carry the massive weight of the thermal mass on the floors as it is a raised house with wooden joists. you can feel someone jumping around in any room in the house as the floors flex and rebound. I would need to go below and reinforce with more piers in any area extra weight is put.
sigh... to much hard work for me nowdays.
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