Best way to thaw frozen water pipes

When I lived in Michigan I used elecrical heat tapes. They are slow but they work. They wont hurt plastic pipe. Get a good tape and wrap it on the pipe. You can pretty much leave it there. I used an optional Reddy heater plug in thermostat that I had to turn the tape on and off. Worked pretty good.

We get involed different times with the extra cold pipes, we have numerous knipco heaters with chimney pipe adjustable elbows, 250,000 btu lp gas portable unit,as well as several smaller ones and several lp torches made for flame throwing, but a bucket of hot water will beat them hands down in 99% of the cases. We do offer a hot water pressure washer option, but is a real winter pain in the butt for mobility. A word for those burying pipes to consider is when you have the trench dug, why is that most folks only lay down one pipe. The cost of throwing another alongside in the trench is but a drop in the bucket when you have a leak or frozen pipes. Many times if we get into rock we sandwitch the pipes in three or four layers of styrafoam, or at least run it through a 4" non perferated field tile. I would wonder if in a pit you could use the electric heaters to avoid the problem. Most people do not realize that a light bulb is just as efficent as a heater, watt for watt. And leaving lights on in your house if you have total electric heat is not a big deal in extreem cold. Yea I'm long winded, but once I get done with this I got to do the housework thing. Dave NE IA

Here's a piece of welder trivia: The setting for 70 amps on Lincoln's red "tombstone" welder has a circle around it. This is as far as Lincoln will go to indicate that this is the setting to use to thaw pipes. The other thing about this setting is that it is the only one that Lincoln admits has more than a 20% duty cycle, 100% in this case. From what I know of the physics of transformers, it's either impossible or virtually impossible for the tap at 70 amps to have a 100% duty cycle while the taps immediately below it and above it drop back to 20%. I guess Lincoln can say what they like as long as they understate capacity rather than overstate it.

Stan

For the pit, don't wait - pull a plank off, pour a bucket of hot water on the pipes going through the bottom, replace the plank. You don't want to give them time to freeze in any deeper into the sides, get water moving through them, the moving water will be a radiator & keep things warmed up again.

Pipe I've heard many different things, I assume underground - a welder is mentioned a lot, not sure what distance one can do, or where you find a welder with long enough leads, or if it works on plastic line... Fortunately everything on this farm is 6 feet deep or so that is burried, other than one line to the barn that juust stays frozen until spring if it freezes.

--->Paul

All hydrants are in pits here - they tend to freeze a bit more that way, but how do you deal with the burried ones when things go wrong? And for me things always go wrong....

--->Paul