Keeping Pipes from Freezing – Investigation into Freezing and Bursting Water Pipes in Residential Construction

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  1. Bill P Says:
    September 18th, 2009 at 3:39 pm

    When our pipes burst while living in Colorado we learned the hard way that even insulated pipes can freeze and burst. So we paid to get our pipes wrapped with heat tape. The installation for wrapping the pipes with heat tape was three times the cost of the heat tape. But, the real shocker was the 70 dollar rise in our energy bill. We thought we’d seen the last of our freezing pipe problems until one of the heat tape fuzes blew. Apparrently we were supposed to crawl around and inspect our wrapped pipes each year or pay someone else to do it.

    Our neighbors told us they were using a Redytemp to solve their frozen pipe problems after trying insulation and wrapping their pipes with heat tape just as we had. We order our Redytemp off the internet since we couldn’t find it in any stores. We ended up installing it ourselves since it looked so simple. The process of how Redytemp works made perfect sense. Why heat the outside of the pipe to stop the water inside the pipes from freezing. Redytemp circulates warm water from our water heater through our hot and cold water pipes every 5 or 10 minutes to keep the water in the pipes above freezing while also heating the pipes. Our energy bill wasn’t any where near the cost we’d been paying when we used heat tape so those savings paid for the system after the second year. We’ve yet to have frozen pipe problems through for 4 seasons, knock on wood. The wife likes the fact that she doesn’t have to run the hot water upstairs for 2 minutes anymore when she wants hot water.

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