What to do about frozen pipes in the wellhouse?

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Woke up with no water today...frozen pipes (or water in the pipes) in the wellhouse. Normally when we know it will be below freezing, my dh runs a lightbulb in the wellhouse all night and it keeps things from freezing. We have water stored and a generator to run the well pump from time to time, but is there anything we can do to keep the mechanism from freezing if there's no electricity?

The well house is about 3-1/2 feet high and is not airtight.

-- Jill D. (jdance@mindspring.com), December 26, 1999

Answers

Hi,

My first thought is that you get a simple battery setup that you keep charged with the generator and will then keep a lightbulb lit most of the nights you are worried about. Good luck.

-- Kristi (securxsys@cs.com), December 26, 1999.


Place haybales against the walls for cutting down the wind and ading insulation. Get some plastic and some spray foam and make the house air tight. Maybe some insulation in the roof.

IF the well house was large you could put a lot of stored water in it, run the generator in there and heat up the water via the waste heat from the genset, but that probably won't work due to size problems.

Go to your local catholic church and see if you can get some big novena (sp?) candles or some big candles from Dollar Store. Put the candle in a metal bucket, we're not looking for light, just safe heat source. If you have a wood stove, a couple of jerry cans of water heated up to 180 F. or so and placed in the wellhouse might be enough to carry it till morning. Sometimes just putting a 55 gallon drum of water in an unheated area will be enough, ie. the water in the drum will bleed off heat like mad while the water goes through the eutectic point (the water in the drum will freeze first, hopefully).

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), December 26, 1999.


I had a well with a hand pump put in just a few months ago and live in a very cold place. About 1 winter out of 2, or 2 out of 3, we get quite an accumulation of snow. Do I need an enclosure around my pump? I hadn't thought of it until I read this question. In the remaining few days, I was thinking maybe an ice-fishing tent would do the job. Would appreciate info from a well owner in a similar climate.

-- Jack Frost (brrr@frozen.com), December 26, 1999.

Jack, Is your hand pump a "real" hand pump with the cylinder down in the well casing, or a pitcher pump with the cylinder built into the pump? How deep is the well, or rather, what is the distance to water? If over 20 feet or so, it will have to have thecylinder down closer to the water, and that kind of system shouldn't freeze up if installed properly. A pitcher pump, with the cylinder in the pump itself, could freeze up easily. A hand pump installed properly, will have a small (1/8") hole in the pipe going down to the cylinder, 8 to 10 feet down the casing, to allow water in the pump and pipe to drain out slowly when not in use, so that water won't accumulate and freeze in the pump or pipe. Hope this helps.

Jill, Insulation is the best thing to keep your well house from freeaing up, as suggested by others. Insulation to keep heat in, sealing and weatherstripping to keep cold air out, and maybe an occassional heat source, such as a kerosene lantern or candle, etc., for when it's going to get really cold. Seal it up first, then insulate, and then get your heat source ready. Of course, if you have some kind of combustion in the pump house (lantern or candle) you will need a small amount of combustion air and some place for smoke and fumes to escape. Make some kind of closable vent - doesn't need to be very big.

-- Jim (jiminwis@yahoo.com), December 26, 1999.


Jim, I assume you are referring to what you are referring to as a "real" handpump, in regards to drilling that hole. If you do this with the down pipe on your pitcher pump, you won't be able to pump any water to the surface at all, as you will not be able to create enough suction with all the air getting in. The pitcher pump I have can be drained by lifting up on the handle whenever you are done pumping.

Jill, I agree with what Jim is telling you. As much insulation as you can gracefully install. Seal cracks. The success you have will be based on many different factors, so it's hard to predict from afar. Factors are: size of pumphouse (smaller is better, all else being equal). Amount of insulation. How cold it gets, and how long it stays cold. Whether the pressure tank, assuming there is one, is located in the pump house. Size of said pumphouse. How often the pressure tank has its water replaced with fresh well water (in other words, how much water you're using. How airtight the pump house is.

I had the pipes in the pumphouse freeze recently, at one of my rentals. There is no auxilliary heat source--only the 56 degree water in the pressure tank (40 gallons, more or less, I think). The pumphouse is about five feet square and five feet high. It has R 11 insulation in walls and ceiling; no insulation under the concret slab floor. It is quite airtight, except for the door, which is not very airtight at all, having a gap big enough to incert a pencil around most of it when it's shut.

I was surprised that it froze, although it had been quite cold for a week and a half or so, getting down to 9 degrees a couple of mornings, and staying below twenty-five degrees for the whole cold snap. I put a light bulb in the pumphouse, and the water started runnning in less than an hour, so it wasn't too bad; also, no leaks. I realized that part of the problem is that the house had been vacant for a couple of weeks, while we looked for new renters. Hence, the water in the tank had gotten gradually colder, day by day, until reaching a temperature cold enough that at least one of the pipes in the pumphouse froze.

I live in a fairly moderate climate, and it's unusual to have weather this cold for this long, tho it's not at all unusual to have lows in the twenties and FAIRLY common to have lows in the teens. But the ground rarely freezes more than an inch deep. But here, if you have decent insulation, decent airtightness, and some sunshine on the pumphouse during cold, clear weather, there's I have almost never had a problem.

Good luck! (By the way, the cost of fiberglass insulation for a small pumphouse is very cheap. Keep it dry, though, or it will rot out your wooden pumphouse, as well as losing a lot of its insulative value.

ALK

Jack, Is your hand pump a "real" hand pump with the cylinder down in the well casing, or a pitcher pump with the cylinder built into the pump? How deep is the well, or rather, what is the distance to water? If over 20 feet or so, it will have to have thecylinder down closer to the water, and that kind of system shouldn't freeze up if installed properly. A pitcher pump, with the cylinder in the pump itself, could freeze up easily. A hand pump installed properly, will have a small (1/8") hole in the pipe going down to the cylinder, 8 to 10 feet down the casing, to allow water in the pump and pipe to drain out slowly when not in use, so that water won't accumulate and freeze in the pump or pipe. Hope this helps.

Jill, Insulation is the best thing to keep your well house from freeaing up, as suggested by others. Insulation to keep heat in, sealing and weatherstripping to keep cold air out, and maybe an occassional heat source, such as a kerosene lantern or candle, etc., for when it's going to get really cold. Seal it up first, then insulate, and then get your heat source ready. Of course, if you have some kind of combustion in the pump house (lantern or candle) you will need a small amount of combustion air and some place for smoke and fumes to escape. Make some kind of closable vent - doesn't need to be very big.

-- Jim (jiminwis@yahoo.com), December 26, 1999.

-- Al K. Lloyd (all@ready.now), December 27, 1999.



Jill, forgot to mention. If your pipes DO freeze up, you can thaw them out quite rapidly by pouring hot, preferably boiling, water over them. Wait a bit after doing so, then do it again, as many times as necessary. Leave a faucet on in the house, or whereever, and observe. Once the water starts running, even a fast drip, you can generally stop applying hot water, as the water from the well will slowly begin to thaw the ice in the pipes.

Where I live in the northwest U.S., I don't even have a problem with my "pumphousese" which only house the pipes where they come out of the ground from the well head (submersible pump) without any pressure tank or other source of heat. I generally build these "boxes" about twelve inches high, and just big enough to enclose all the pipes, which I install pretty compactly, so the box is only a bit less than two feet square. Sometimes I "build in" one inch thick styrofoam (R 5); sometimes I just lay a piece of R 19 fiberglass insulation over the pipes before putting the top of the box on. ( When I'm being lazy)

ALK

-- Al K. Lloyd (all@ready.now), December 27, 1999.


The battery-to-lightbulb is an expensive way to heat. How about a candle in a can or jar? Often it takes very little heat to keep it from freezing solid in the pipes (hope you have insulated the wellhouse).

-- bw (home@puget.sound), December 28, 1999.

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