our water pipe broke yesterday... (Boston: real estate, how much, house)

[MikePRU]

Originally Posted by olacda

i thought we might be fine but a water pipe broke behind our bathroom wall and luckily we were at home when it happened. We shut off the water immediately but there was some water dripping down the first floor ceiling and basement ceiling.

I don't know if there is insulation in the space between first floor ceiling and second level subfloor.. but i can see the pink insulation material in the basement ceiling got wet in several spots..

I've tried to call multiple plumbers and they are all busy so we won't get someone to come until Tuesday. Should we remove all the insulation material that got wet or is it fine to leave them there? No experience in dealing with these type of accidents before.. never thought it'd get this worse with just a half day of temperature drop..

Pipes were bursting everywhere this weekend. I know of several schools that are closed today because of it and I know several people who had it happen in their houses.

Anyway in most houses, there's usually not insulation in interior walls or in the ceiling/floor between the 1st and 2nd floors. Some houses have it but it's pretty rare as the only purpose it really serves is for sound deadening as there's no energy conservation benefit in put insulation in those spaces.

As someone already said, run a dehumidifier in your basement to try and dry things out. Perhaps, call a disaster recovery company like ServPro to help you out. They're franchises and some of them offer more construction services and can help you get fixed up as well.

Originally Posted by newenglandgal123

What temp have all the folks with broken pipes been keeping their thermostats at? I understand accidents can happen but many of them I'm sure can be avoided by cranking that thermostat up!! Try 70+ when it's below zero out. Don't be penny wise and pound foolish folks. lol

I didn't even think about this Friday night. Typically, we run our house around 70-72 but at night I like to drop the house to 68 for sleeping. When I woke up Saturday morning, my whole house was reading 62 because my boiler couldn't keep up. Heating systems are really only designed to raise the temperatures in your house by about 60 degrees above exterior temps. Being that it was something like -10 when I woke up I'm lucky it wasn't 50 inside. I need to have someone come in and evaluate my insulation. I had Mass Save do it like 9 years ago but clearly it's not insulated well enough.

Originally Posted by matrix5k

We had a pipe burst too, first time in our lives. The pipe was above the garage without any insulation around it, so it was pretty much in an exterior location. I guess our garage never got that cold before. We will probably have to get some sort of pipe heater for the future.

Shaw's and the Burlington pubic library also had burst pipes. So I guess this was kinda unusual.

Pipe bursts were going off like the finale of a fireworks display this weekend. I was talking to an agent yesterday who's a friend and they had a pipe burst in their house and in one of their vacant listings.

There's really nothing you could have done about that pipe in your garage ceiling. It was SO cold yesterday and you're only going to get so much heat bleed from your house into your garage. If you leave your garage door open all day that could have caused it but if it was mostly closed then there was nothing you could do.

Putting a bathroom above an unconditioned space like a garage is not a great idea but if you do that all the pipes should be insulated even the cold water ones. I have some bedrooms above my garage and I'm always mulling over the idea of ripping open the ceiling and having it spray foamed to make those rooms more comfortable but it would be an expensive project for not a lot of benefit.

Originally Posted by MrRational

#1 on the experience to be gained list? Have a plumber lined up BEFORE you need one.
The same is true for the HVAC or the boiler and a family CPA and attorney.

Sort of good advice . . . the issue is that all of these folks are SO busy on a day like this that even if you have someone you've used before and have a relationship with they are still unlikely to be able to get out to you. I have an HVAC company that installed my HVAC system, they service it, and they've repaired it in the past. I thought my heat wasn't working right (turns it was fine) and I tried to get them to look at it Saturday and was told they're only responding to calls from people with service contracts. I told them if that's how they treat regular customers without contracts then I'm taking my business elsewhere. They wouldn't even sell me a service contract over the phone because they were closed.

[BostonMike7]

I kept my main level at 68 and basement at 64 and still had one pipe on an exterior wall freeze. This pipe fed my main toilet, which was a heated room, so it's amazing it froze. I'm attributing it to a draft from the windy night, combined with the extremely low temps. Didn't feel it in the house, but it must have been making it into the wall from somewhere on the outside. Our deck butts up against this spot, so I would imagine with a stiff breeze there is a way to blow cold air into that spot. Fortunately, it didn't burst, but that pipe only runs about 2 feet up the exterior wall, so I was shocked to find it frozen.

I learned some things sat aboout how my pipes run, and apparently what areas might be at risk of freezing, so i'll make some changes this spring. That was the coldest night I've ever experienced and the first where I had some issues.

[bizcuit]

Wow, I feel really, really lucky that my pipes didn't burst. My pipes were frozen/no running water to any outlet for over 24 hours. The way my water came back so suddenly (from nothing to gushing in an instant) made me wonder if the issue was perhaps with a water main somewhere instead of my individual house, but I haven't seen anything posted to local social media, so I think probably not. Definitely dodged a bullet here!

[wmass]

We always drip our bathroom sink when temps will be 0 or colder (pipes on an outside wall) but this weekend the pipes on an inside wall against unheated space froze. That never happened before, so it must have been record cold. Fortunately, they are pex, which is more resistant to breaking. Took about 36 hours to thaw.

[OutdoorLover]

When there is a pipe in an exterior wall, it's normally embedded in insulation. That insulation is insulating the pipe from the cold environment outside the house, but it's also insulating the pipe from the warm environment inside the room. Not easy to reroute plumbing (and move fixtures when that's needed too), but this is why you don't want pipes in an outside wall when things are laid out.

[BostonMike7]

Originally Posted by bizcuit

The way my water came back so suddenly (from nothing to gushing in an instant) made me wonder if the issue was perhaps with a water main somewhere instead of my individual house,

My incoming water temps were in the high 30's and that was measured Sat afternoon after it warmed up a bit. That pipe is down 4 feet or so from grade and it was still that cold. I wouldn't be surprised if there were issues with supply lines freezing up if the lines were not deep enough.

Of course if those leak, it will be really hard to detect.

[BostonMike7]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

When there is a pipe in an exterior wall, it's normally embedded in insulation. That insulation is insulating the pipe from the cold environment outside the house, but it's also insulating the pipe from the warm environment inside the room.

I ran into that issue as well. A space heater on the wall did nothing. I ended up pulling the toilet shut off valve off to reveal the copper pipe stub, and then used a heat gun on that to warm the pipe. the blockage must have been close because after 10-15 mins of that, i was able to get flow.

[MikePRU]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

When there is a pipe in an exterior wall, it's normally embedded in insulation. That insulation is insulating the pipe from the cold environment outside the house, but it's also insulating the pipe from the warm environment inside the room. Not easy to reroute plumbing (and move fixtures when that's needed too), but this is why you don't want pipes in an outside wall when things are laid out.

Yeah. Generally speaking, you don't want pipes in walls that abut unheated spaces (garages, storage areas, the outside, etc.). They tend to freeze and burst much more often than pipes that run through interior walls. Of course, there's really no getting around routing pipes through your basement but because that area is below grade it doesn't tend to get as cold as say an exterior wall might.

From a strictly scientific perspective, there's no such thing as cold. There's only heat and a lack of heat. So, insulation provides a barrier against heat. It's hard for heat to move through insulation and that works in both directions. Insulation keeps heat out in the summer and keeps it in during the winter.

[Lampert]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

I kept my main level at 68 and basement at 64 and still had one pipe on an exterior wall freeze.

How much does it matter what are you setting the thermostat to? in one or 2 rooms in my house the heating wasn't able to keep up so it stayed on the entire night and yet the T was lower than 60F in the morning.

[matrix5k]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

The hardwood floors in my summer house went down in May 2010. In January 2011, I got a call at my Vermont winter place that a washing machine hose had burst and flooded my house for probably a couple of weeks. The floors went into the dumpster. Sheet rock and insulation went into the dumpster. Some remedial carpentry to fix problems and put it all back together. Big homeowners insurance claim and a $2,000 water/sewer bill. They waived the sewer bill part with a copy of the letter from the insurance company. I had a plumber install a quick shutoff for the washing machine and I use it religiously. I also shut the water off to the house if I’m gone for more than a couple of days.

If you shut the water off when you leave the house, aren't they still at risk of bursting? Unless you bleed the pipes? I guess it would save any further flooding.