What do you do to keep your pressure tank/well head from freezing?

[rus_geek]

...and how is it done up North.

Everything I've dealt with in central Wisconsin and Minnesota is quite far underground. For city supply lines, they branch off to enter the house four to ten feet underground, depending on how deep the mains are located and what other utilities are buried in the area. These branch lines typically enter through the floor of the basement, or low on a wall. The city's meter is in the basement of the home and read electronically.

For rural wells, they are mostly submersible pumps in the well casing (mine is 186' down). The water line branches out of the casing below the frost line. My line is about seven feet underground and brought in through the wall. My parents' well line comes in about six feet underground.

Pressure tanks and related electronics and plumbing are safe and warm in the basement of the house. There's nothing above ground outside to freeze. The only exception I've seen is for mobile homes. Those water lines come up under the trailer, are heavily insulated, and usually have a heat tape wrapped around with a thermostat.

-rus-

 

[passgas55]

Instead of a 220 volt bulb in a 120 socket you can do 2-100 watts 120 volt bulbs in series. That way you would drop 60 volts on each socket.

 

[JeremyL]

my friend has one with 3 lights we wired one on all the time 2 on a photo cell one is inside the dog house one outside when the first light burns out the photo cell kicks in the second 2 the one is outside so you can see it and replace the first.

another trick is get 200w 220v incandescent lamps the filaments are heavier and run them on 120v you ger 100 watts out of them.

tom

Brilliant ideas!
Very illuminating discussion.
Thanks.

 

[JeremyL]

We use a couple of incandescent bulbs. But they are slowly getting phased out, and, I believe, are going to be regulated away. Is that right?

I heard that someone in Germany (?), where they are banned, is selling incandescents not as "light bulbs" but as heating elements to get around the prohibition. Will we have to deal with that at some point?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[RadarTech]

I have to ask... where is your pump? And, how far underground is the waterline connected to the well pump?

The top of our well sticks out of the ground about a foot. Its just a pipe with a cap where the wire go in. The pump is at the bottom of the well, 80' down. The water line connects to the side of the well casing about 4' underground, well below the frost line. No one around here every insulates the top of their well pipe because it never freezes, even at -22 below zero. We do, however, use decorations to hid the well cap, such as fake rocks and wishing wells.

The pump is a submersible one and it is about 375 feet down.
The pipe that froze was the pipe from the well casing that goes from the galvanized line coming out of the casing to the ground where it goes underground to the house.
The pipe to the house is about 20 inches under ground..

Thewell head is above ground.. As is the water line junction to the house does that make sense?

 

[dave1949]

We use a couple of incandescent bulbs. But they are slowly getting phased out, and, I believe, are going to be regulated away. Is that right?

I heard that someone in Germany (?), where they are banned, is selling incandescents not as "light bulbs" but as heating elements to get around the prohibition. Will we have to deal with that at some point?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I thought I heard that about Canada.

No, we won't have to deal with it, we can also reclassify incandescents to heat lamps We're Americans, after all.

I would guess true heat lamps will be around for a long time. Like those used by chicken brooders, McDonalds to keep food warm, etc. I hope so because I have two of them in my kitchen range hood
Dave.

 

[riptides]

Nice ideas....

I have both a pressure tank and the well pump sitting in a small 4X8X4 cinder block housing. I run a simple heat lamp. Have never had an issue and the temps were down to 8 degrees the other night, I think wind chill pushed it well below zero.....

 

[SandburRanch]

As long as one has elect. power the challenge is usually simple by using heat lamps of some type or even just letting a very small stream of water run from a faucet.

When electric power is lost is when keeping plumbing from freezing becomes more challenging. At that point a generator may be handy, if it will start and run. Have you kept yours in top working order? Another choice may be to drain the pipes and even the water heater if there is a longer term outage.

Most household plumbing isn't designed to drain by gravity so a little air pressure would do the trick if the plumber did his homework and installed an air injection fitting in an appropriate location. Oh, but wait, the air compressor has leaked off and we said there is no elect. power. Now we're getting down to the bottom of the barrel for solutions.

Maybe we're lucky, we have gas heat that works without being on the grid. AH HA, I have an idea. I'll heat water in a couple of pails and when they are plenty hot the wife can carry those two pails of BTU's out to the little well shed while I'm preparing more BTU's.

See, I told you it can get complicated.:laughing::laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

The pump is a submersible one and it is about 375 feet down.
The pipe that froze was the pipe from the well casing that goes from the galvanized line coming out of the casing to the ground where it goes underground to the house.
The pipe to the house is about 20 inches under ground..

Thewell head is above ground.. As is the water line junction to the house does that make sense?

Yes. That makes sense. Good explanation.

Very strange setup, I will say. Up here, the pipe to the house comes out of the side of the well casing below the frost line. As I mentioned, ours is about 4-5 feet down. The only thing that comes out of the top of the 4" pipe is the electrical lines. I wonder why they do it that way down where you live?

Seems a lot of folks that are having problems with freezing in this thread are talking about well heads and pump houses.

Most new pumps up here are at the bottom of the well and buried lines all the way as I described.

The older ones with the pump above ground have the pumps inside the house, as is the expansion tank. We NEVER have freezing problems with either setup because all of the lines are buried below the frost line.

Of course, most of us have basements, too. But even slab houses have the water lines buried deep enough to the well to avoid freezing.

What we do have problems with is outdoor garden hose faucets freezing, then bursting inside the house. Older houses have a shutoff valve about a foot inside the house. You close that in the fall and open the outside faucet to drain it. Newer houses and retrofits have outside valve handles that have a long shaft to actuate the valve, which is actually a foot back inside the house.

Seems a lot of the folks on here with problems could solve all of them if they would have all of the lines buried and have the pump at the bottom of the well as described above. Perhaps it is a case of "we have always done it that way".

 

[bdeboer]

Seems a lot of the folks on here with problems could solve all of them if they would have all of the lines buried and have the pump at the bottom of the well as described above. Perhaps it is a case of "we have always done it that way".

I think in situations like mobile homes, farmhouse without a decent crawlspace or houses built slab on grade the pressure tank is quite often put into a well house. Although our local well driller typically buries a pressure tank near the submersible well. If you pull the cap off from the well casing there will be a description of where the pressure tank is located.