I had the same problem on one. It's on our garage wall so pipe was frozen inside of the wall. Put a heater in the garage and got it dripping. Not sure what I'm going to do now.

Ok, update on my attempts. Ended up putting 10 miniature Christmas lights in each faucet cover and let the rest hang out. Measured the temp in each after 2hrs. All were running between 75-80 degrees. That worked great until the rolling blackouts started at 2am last night. They then froze. Pulled everything off this morning late and thawed by slowly pouring hot water over them. A couple took a lot of water before the heat conducted far enough back into the wall in the pipe. Now, have them all uncovered and dripping. Been ok like this since around lunch. I am worried the fast drip is going to freeze up when it gets to 4 tonight.

Needs to be a constant trickle at least. Size of a pencil lead is what I have heard.

An old foam mattress we were throwing out cut into squares and a pocket slit into the side does the trick

Bonfire97 said:

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Ok, update on my attempts. Ended up putting 10 miniature Christmas lights in each faucet cover and let the rest hang out. Measured the temp in each after 2hrs. All were running between 75-80 degrees. That worked great until the rolling blackouts started at 2am last night. They then froze. Pulled everything off this morning late and thawed by slowly pouring hot water over them. A couple took a lot of water before the heat conducted far enough back into the wall in the pipe. Now, have them all uncovered and dripping. Been ok like this since around lunch. I am worried the fast drip is going to freeze up when it gets to 4 tonight.

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That why I decided to just leave the covers on instead of thawing the pipes earlier, as what's done is done.

Could potentially end with worse trouble than before.

Tim Weaver said:

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Goose83 said:

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So we have:

Styrofoam covers
Styrofoam covers with towels or tee shirts placed inside, or wrapped around the outside.
Styrofoam covers with water dripping.
Dripping.
Pool noodles.
Towels and tee shirts wrapped around the pipes with several layers of plastic wrapping.

Clear as mud. Thinking about trying to drip with the styrofoam covers on (need to figure out how to make that work though).

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The particular method really doesn't matter much. What you want to do is cover the faucet with anything.

The metal faucet is conducting cold into the wall where the water is. The pipe is conducting heat from insode your home to where the faucet is. One of these will win. If you cover the metal faucet up, you reduce the amount of cold that the metal faucet can conduct, therfor giving the heat inside your home a better chance at keeping the water from freezing.


Just go cover your faucets and be done with it.

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Thanks.

We used the styrofoam covers and we checked this morning and the faucets were frozen. I used some cloth strips soaked in hot water and wrapped it around the faucet and got them defrosted. I am just going to keep them at a slow trickle. Have not had any issues with the inside pipes.

Same, I defrosted yesterday and they were frozen again today. Just going to let everything drip now.

The one that I've been dripping without a cover froze last night. Looks like the icicle built up and back into the faucet. Took about 5 minutes with a heat gun and it's back running.

Goose83 said:

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turfman80 said:

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Did some internet reading and will try this on my most exposed faucets...wrap protruding section from wall with styrofoam pipe wrap, wrap faucet with towel , then cover with a styrofoam cover, like I normally do in freezing weather. In addition, I am now wedging a cheap styrofoam cooler flush with the wall to cover the faucet. An engineer on the net says the extra covered air around the faucet will act as extra insulation. Worth a try with low digits predicted...

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I thought about this as well.

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Didnt work great... 3 of my 4 outside wall faucets were frozen when I checked this morning, the only holdout being on the south side of the house under the porch eave. The boots had worked fine on temps down into the 20's in the past, but this stretch was too much. I got the three flowing again by using hot water, covered them again with insulation on the pipe section sticking out of the wall, then followed with the boot covers. My plan is to go out every so often and open the faucets to a full flow for a few seconds, as mentioned in an earlier post, not giving the pipes a chance to freeze. Thankful no pipes had split, yet.... knock on wood.

New see through model.

Aggie said:

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Just unwrapped on my outside spigots.. was frozen.

I thawed it out enough to turn the knob.. nothing comes through the line.

So am I screwed?

What should I do at this point ?

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Let it thaw. Try again this weekend.