Freezing Pipes, Conventional Houses, and Wood/Mass Heaters

Donna Lynn wrote:If you just want to be able to be gone from home for a few days or so, and you don't want to fill your drain traps with anti-freeze or other toxic gunk, plain ol' 80 proof or higher booze can be poured into the drain to displace most of the water.  No taking anything apart or trying to blow air through.  Same with toilet bowls.  80 proof alcohol has an approx. freezing temp of -17 degrees F.  So mixed with a bit of water left in a drain trap it might not protect quite that low, but still WAYYY better than 32 degrees F!  Just keep a few bottles of super cheap vodka or whatever on hand and you'll only be putting food-safe liquids down into your septic tank and field.  (A caveat is that long term exposure to alcohol may affect PVC plastics, so if anyone plans to use this method long term, do your due diligence on your plumbing system vs. your alcohol type vs. how much water would be mixed with the alcohol in the traps.)  I'm not an auto person, but don't they make little squeeze-bulb tubes with different colored plastic balls inside that float or sink at different dilutions of anti-freeze?  Could that kind of thing be used or re-imagined for use with alcohol/water solutions to tell what temp it would freeze at?  That way you could test each trap to be sure you have enough alcohol in it for the temps you are expecting during your absence, at least until you get the hang of how much to pour down each drain or toilet bowl.  

For supply lines, I would install one or more drain valves at low point(s) and open a faucet at a high point(s) and just drain out as much as possible into a bucket which can be used to water plants or whatever.  

If you do a search on freezing points of natural liquids, and check out more than just the top few, you may even find something that would work better than cheap booze!  I keep Costco bottles of vodka onhand for herbal tincturing, and they are fairly cheap.  So if I had to winterize temporarily I would not hesitate to use that to protect a toilet or drain traps from freezing temps.  We have both PVC and cast iron drain lines and standard porcelain toilets.  Copper supply lines that can be drained down to the basement.  But we do not have frequent needs to be gone for days at a time in winter.

If anyone knows of any reason NOT to use vodka (or other cheap booze 80 proof or higher) for this purpose, please share!

I think I would stick to the RV type I use now. At less than 10 dollars a gallon it's much cheaper and it's a blend of ethanol and food grade propylene glycol (used as a food additive). I wouldn't want to drink the stuff but it's labelled as septic safe and is not supposed to be consumed anyways but flushed out after melt. The glycol role is not to keep it from freezing but to make it freeze like a slushy so it doesn't break anything. I have heard concentrated alcohol will affect certain seals in plumbing such as rubber gaskets. I know alcohol in engines used to disolve rubber fuel lines.

One way of avoiding expensive damage, is putting antifreeze in the hydronic system piping.
This will protect the baseboard, piping, boiler, and or radiators from freezing, even if the power is off or something wrong with the system. A feeder for antifreeze can be added, that runs off of battery power, which is continuously charged.
If you don't have to worry about the heating system freezing, then the domestic water lines can be drained if leaving the house for an extended time, and the main water source protected by either heaters or heat tape.
Insulation alone is not enough, as it can only hold in heat, not produce it, and whatever heat is contained by it, will eventually pass  through and be lost.
Moving water can not freeze, so another method is to set up a hydronic system to run the circulator pump continuously and only cycle the burner with thermostat.
This can not be done with zone valves, only with a single zone or multiple zones, each with thier own circulator.
As long as the water moves, it won't freeze.
However it's much safer to add antifreeze because if power is lost for any reason, it will freeze.

David Baillie wrote:
I think I would stick to the RV type I use now. At less than 10 dollars a gallon it's much cheaper and it's a blend of ethanol and food grade propylene glycol (used as a food additive). I wouldn't want to drink the stuff but it's labelled as septic safe and is not supposed to be consumed anyways but flushed out after melt. The glycol role is not to keep it from freezing but to make it freeze like a slushy so it doesn't break anything. I have heard concentrated alcohol will affect certain seals in plumbing such as rubber gaskets. I know alcohol in engines used to disolve rubber fuel lines.

When I last bought cheap vodka for utility purposes, it was $3 or 4 for a 1.75L.

I've seen that at freezer temps (-12F?), 7% cider will have much of the water freeze, but the alcohol will still pour off in a slushy concoction (known as fractionally freezing). My guess is that a 40% alcohol product would be more than enough to prevent an ice block from forming until it was to approach -170*F

Much of the rubber used in internal combustion engines prior to the 1990s (and after outside the regulated auto industry) would dry and crack from exposure to alcohol. Dilute amounts such as the common 10% ethanol blend will do this gradually. Is rubber commonly used in plumbing systems outside of faucets and toilet tanks?

Evaporation is a definite concern if used in an exposed manner over longer periods.

As long as the water moves, it won't freeze.

This is a hazardous misconception that I've heard repeated since I was a kid. Moving water will absolutely freeze! Some rivers freeze solid all the way to the bottom. It takes longer to freeze than still water, but at cold enough temps it can happen in a few hours. The water that comes from your faucets starts out below frost line in the ground, where it is typically  45-65 degrees. Leaving a faucet dripping is allowing new (warmer) water to run through the plumbing (and even that is not guaranteed not to freeze). But a circulator in a boiler system is not introducing new water. I have seen an entire building freeze up when the boiler malfunctioned due to bad heating oil. The circulators were running because the thermostats were calling for heat. The fuel had gelled because the wrong oil was delivered (#2 instead of #1). Strong winds had blown the roof hatch open, and the boiler room lost heat quickly. It was about -35F.

Coydon Wallham wrote:I've seen that at freezer temps (-12F?), 7% cider will have much of the water freeze, but the alcohol will still pour off in a slushy concoction (known as fractionally freezing). My guess is that a 40% alcohol product would be more than enough to prevent an ice block from forming until it was to approach -170*F.

Haha, true, freeze distillation of booze has been used for centuries. I had some dodgy homemade wine once and tried it. I seem to recall that the ice formed a pretty solid block. (And the wine was more boozy, but still dodgy.)

For traps, if the water was blown out with compressed air and pure 40% booze poured in, it could work.

For my seasonal cabin, I prefer to use the RV antifreeze in the traps. The fresh water supply lines are blown out with compressed air. It occured to me that blowing out the traps with compressed air and putting some sort of flexible plug would do the job of sealing in the sewer gases. Maybe next year.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:
Haha, true, freeze distillation of booze has been used for centuries. I had some dodgy homemade wine once and tried it. I seem to recall that the ice formed a pretty solid block. (And the wine was more boozy, but still dodgy.)

I'm careful to call it fractionally freezing and never freeze distilling because;
A) the methanol seems to melt the ice it is in contact with. Yes the cider is mostly a hard block coming out of the freezer, but when you pour off the alcohol it takes some water with it. I suspect you could not use freezing to produce anhydrous methanol so it would not qualify technically (just guessing here).
B) more importantly, if you call something distilling, you invite undue attention from the department of making you sad...

C) almost forgot, FFing does not purify the methanol- the resulting smaller quantity will contain as much of the nasty chemicals that can attack the optic nerve and whatever else as were in the starting quantity.

Good distinction. And yes, I've heard concerns about concentrating the methanol content as well. Potentially nasty effects...

Maybe this will be of interest here as experiments with RMHs are shown.

The new free heat movie trailer is here starring Rocket Mass Heaters at center stage:

For more info, also take a look at https://freeheat.info