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Old 18th Nov 2019, 11:57 am   #1
high_vacuum_house
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Smile Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

Good morning,
I was playing around with an idea last night to prevent the outside tap on our house freezing up. It did last winter even with a tap jacket fitted to it and it cracked the brass casting.

I have a spare, well made wall wart which delivers 18 VDC at 1 amp and therefore can deliver a maximum of 18 Watts. I was thinking of using a 100 ohm 7 watt wirewound resistor clamped to the underside of the tap connected directly across this power supply. This would dissipate 3.24 Watts under the jacket and be enough to keep the tap above freezing and also be well within the specifications of the power supply.

Any thoughts on this idea?

Christopher Capener
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 12:09 pm   #2
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

I saw at someones house a non freeze Scandinavian tap, the actual valve part is in the house operated by a long shaft from through the wall.

Peter
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 12:30 pm   #3
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

It may be easier to hang a car paraffin sump heater under the tap if the weather gets really cold. You only need it on the coldest nights, at least in England.
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 3:25 pm   #4
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

I have a second tap, a lever type ball valve indoors and the ipie from it to the outside tap angles downwards. I turn off the inside valve and open the outside one with no hose connected. The sloping pipe then drains.

Oh, and the sloping pipe is in alkathene, so the outside tap isn't connected to the house's PME 'earthing' system and doesn't breach the wiring regs.

It's a bit of a nuisance having to operate two taps when I want water outside in the cold months, but it's worked for 20 years.

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Old 18th Nov 2019, 3:30 pm   #5
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

During the fierce winter in 2013 my outside tap feed burst creating a dramatic ice sculptor [rather than a flooded garden] in Rammy. My friend and volunteer caretaker Mike, photographed it. Subsequently I put a washing machine tap in line with the cold feed in the house and used that that to turn off the supply during cold weather. Draining the pipe to the outside tap leaves nothing to freeze up! That was a very cold winter in my street. I wasn't there but ironically, there was then no water to my house and the immediate neighbour for a couple of weeks. The problem was buried deep in an old lead pipe but Mike had disconnected the garden supply by the time it returned

Dave W

Great minds etc David!
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 5:16 pm   #6
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

If the tap and pipe are copper you could stick some relatively high power LEDs (10 watts on) on there and use the tap and pipe as the heatsink, if you use different colours it will give the place a nice festive feel .
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 5:16 pm   #7
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

Someone I know keeps the tap in his (unheated) greenhouse from freezing by hanging a tin-can-with-a-tealight-in-it from the tap's spout.

[You can get large bags of tealights ridiculously cheapy from places like Poundland]
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 5:44 pm   #8
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter.N. View Post
I saw at someones house a non freeze Scandinavian tap, the actual valve part is in the house operated by a long shaft from through the wall.
They've been using that design is the US for several years now! A great design. BTW, how cold does it get in the UK. It's not unusual for the temperature to get down to -20F in the Midwest US.
Dave, USradcoll1, We had a bit of snow and sub-freezing temps and it's still Fall.
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 6:51 pm   #9
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

Quote:
Originally Posted by usradcoll1 View Post
... BTW, how cold does it get in the UK. It's not unusual for the temperature to get down to -20F in the Midwest US ...
Not very cold in a global sense - we're too close to the ocean. Last winter the coldest it got was around -12C (10F) overnight (just to be clear, that was on the coldest night, not every night). The problem is that the weather is unreliable. If it was always very cold in midwinter then it would be worth spending a good deal of money on mitigating that. But it isn't, so it isn't. What that means is that on the quite rare occasions that it does freeze really hard we are very poorly equipped to deal with it. What would, in many other parts of the world, be regarded as laughably small amounts of snow, say, can bring the country's transport systems to a halt. But that doesn't happen often.

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Last edited by GrimJosef; 18th Nov 2019 at 6:58 pm.
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 7:00 pm   #10
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

As GJ says, -12C/10F would be a very cold night in most of England, and even northern Scotland doesn't get colder than that very often. It's unusual for daytime temperatures to stay below freezing. Parts of the US are obviously much, much colder, and as for Canada...
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 7:27 pm   #11
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

I think that if I was going to use one of the electric heater solutions mentioned I would combine that with a simple temperature sensing circuit so that the 'heat' only came on when the temperature dropped below a certain level.

I prefer the mechanical solutions, especially the idea of remote-mounting the valve inside the house on the end of a long actuator - the two-taps solution is not bad either but then you have to be disciplined enough to remember to close the inner tap and drain the outer tap - every other year our multi-mode hosepipe 'gun' head gets ruined because we forget to take it off the hose before the cold nights set in. (Which reminds me...)
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 7:43 pm   #12
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

Could you use anything like this? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Heating-C...fndRcDSVgvrd7Q


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Old 18th Nov 2019, 8:35 pm   #13
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

Where I used to work the water main came in through the cellar and would sometimes freeze and burst despite copious lagging; meaning a flood might greet us when returning to work in the new year. The boss and I mitigated the risk by fitting a solenoid valve in the rising main activated by the workshop lighting circuit. No-one ever forgot to shut the water off for Christmas break!

I registered -18C coming back on the M6 from a NYE party in Birmingham one year, that's cold for the Midlands.

My dad's American motorhome has a mains-operated (120V) engine-block heater for the cold American winters, not likely to be used in Blighty! But I feel their pain!
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 9:07 pm   #14
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

-18C must be close to a record low for England.
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 9:45 pm   #15
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

I've seen -17C, but I was working outside in the early hours of the morning and worse, I was up to my elbows in petrol..... not good for the wind chill factor.

David
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 10:59 pm   #16
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

Not here but done minus forty odd degrees C...….Ccccccccold….That was an official weather station temp. for some miles away but locally some folks claimed -50 odd at the same time on their thermometers. All vehicles outside had engine blocks plugged in, the power cords were a trip hazard for a poor pedestrian like me shuffling back to my digs in the dark after doing a graveyard shift down below.

Forty below's the crossover point.

Not often lower the -1C at my location here in the SW of the UK, not far from the sea, the Gulf Stream and all that, the outside tap and standpipe wears an old lumberjack shirt if freezing threatens.

Lawrence.
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 11:08 pm   #17
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

Apparently, and according to the Met office, a temperature of −26.1 °C (−15.0 °F) was recorded under at Edgmond in Shropshire on 10 January 1982.

Taters!

Cheers,
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Old 18th Nov 2019, 11:41 pm   #18
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

1982 was a very cold winter. The water in the helium gasometer at the Clarendon Lab, in Oxford, froze one night, at least round the outside edges. Despite having a few-kW heater running in it. As with all frost protection schemes it's not just about the amount of heating but also about getting the distribution right. Water's actually rather a poor thermal conductor.

Cheers,

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Old 19th Nov 2019, 12:30 am   #19
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

paulsherwin,

just curious - what's "a car paraffin sump heater"?

Not heard of that before, despite living in the frozen north.

Steve.
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Old 19th Nov 2019, 12:50 am   #20
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Default Re: Idea to prevent the outside tap freezing up this winter

A little squat paraffin burner that would be slid along the ground until it was positioned right under the sump of a car or lorry engine to keep it from freezing and to make starting easier.
It was hot air and combustion products that reached the engine. Good heaters had a gauze to make sure flame did not extend upwards.

In some places similar things are used to keep Diesel in tanks from going waxy in the cold.

David
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