What do you do to keep your pressure tank/well head from freezing?

[MossRoad]

I have our tank in the basement beside the hot water heater.
The well head is just one of those fake rocks...

It has lots of insulation tape on the pipes. and then the outdoor insulation wrapped around the well with the rock on top.. and then dirt piled up to the plastic rock..
it is about a foot of dirt high and wide around the rock..

NOW-- last year my well head froze and boy what a mess...
the well head is ~40 feet lower than the basement..
It even broken the ball valve!

I had planned to build a good pump house this summer but never did...
maybe a good spring project!


anyway... that's my story!

J

I have to ask... where is your pump? And, how far underground is the waterline connected to the well pump?

The top of our well sticks out of the ground about a foot. Its just a pipe with a cap where the wire go in. The pump is at the bottom of the well, 80' down. The water line connects to the side of the well casing about 4' underground, well below the frost line. No one around here every insulates the top of their well pipe because it never freezes, even at -22 below zero. We do, however, use decorations to hid the well cap, such as fake rocks and wishing wells.

 

[MossRoad]

my friend has one with 3 lights we wired one on all the time 2 on a photo cell one is inside the dog house one outside when the first light burns out the photo cell kicks in the second 2 the one is outside so you can see it and replace the first.

another trick is get 200w 220v incandescent lamps the filaments are heavier and run them on 120v you ger 100 watts out of them.

tom

Excellent suggestions. I especially like the photo cell idea. Neat. :thumbsup:

 

[MossRoad]

I read, with interest, your posts on keeping wellheads and tanks above freezing. Years ago I used the lightbulb method and it works great. I wanted to recall something though for you guys to chew over. Once our rural area lost elect service for 4 days. We were ok with wood heat but....no water pump, so no dripping lines and no light bulbs to heat ANYTHING. Yup, they froze and burst.
What do people with no constant electricity do? Campers, RV's, temp occupancy using generators...etc. All I can think of is DRAIN everything each time you leave. Any other ideas?

I suppose drain and anti-freeze is what campers use. My guess is, if you lost electricity in your home, and it was expected to freeze, you would have to drain all of your pipes and pour antifreeze in the traps to keep them from bursting.

Where we live, the ground temp is usually about 55 degrees. The frost line is, I think, about 38". However, it rarely freezes more than a foot down. It has to get cold for a long time to get down that far. But then it never goes farther. With just our wood stove and no electricity, I can keep the coldest place in the house about 65. Before the wood stove, if we lost power, the temps in the house would drop at night, but it would take several days for the first floor to get to the same as the ambient temps outside. For that matter, on sunny days, with no wood fire and no furnace on, and outside temps around 25, the house stays above 65 inside. I have come home in the middle of many winter days to find it at 69 or 70.

I have many friends that have summer cottages. They drain all the pipes and pour RV anti freeze in the traps and toilets. Their well pumps are almost all down in the well pipes now. There are hardly any left that are in the house or in a pump house.

 

[The Dougster]

I am in total agreement with Mossroad but that's not the purpose for my posting.... this is especially important for those whose water wells have been completed with PVC casing. Being in the groundwater business, I have seen circumstances where the above surface plumbing has frozen, cutting off the supply of water to the pressure tank. When the pressure switch calls for more water, the pump is kicked on but the water has no where to go. The pump motor gets extremely hot and literally shrinks the PVC around the pump. This is always expensive and in some cases, disasterous ... Sometimes, the pump can be pulled and reset, sometimes not. In those cases, one is lucky of the pump can be pushed to the bottom of the well, which means a new pump... expensive!
I bring out this point only to show the importance of a well insulated well head and plumbing.

 

[SPYDERLK]

And my point is that your point is wrong. For you to say that my using CFLs is pointless is simply daft. This has worked for years with the same and much colder temperatures. CFLs DO generate heat just not as much as incandescent bulbs.

Later,
Dan

Understood. The contrarians are just having trouble staying on subject. With the CFLs the longer life gives some insurance and also offsets the much higher bulb cost. And you have a lot of light in there.
larry

 

[Car Doc]

I read, with interest, your posts on keeping wellheads and tanks above freezing. Years ago I used the lightbulb method and it works great. I wanted to recall something though for you guys to chew over. Once our rural area lost elect service for 4 days. We were ok with wood heat but....no water pump, so no dripping lines and no light bulbs to heat ANYTHING. Yup, they froze and burst.
What do people with no constant electricity do? Campers, RV's, temp occupancy using generators...etc. All I can think of is DRAIN everything each time you leave. Any other ideas?

Those are valid points Boeing no doubt and it may make sense however a kerosene heater or 3 and a generator are common appliances to a rural home at least they are here its all a matter of preparation.

We have had outages for as long as 2 weeks in the last 5 years and we would simply run the generator to shower wash clothes and so on not fun but not the end of the world either more like a camping trip where you sleep in your regular bed. ymmv as always

 

[nue2farm]

We have been here in the Ozarks only seven years, this is the first winter I have tried to keep the water outside flowing because I don't like hauling water to the horses, cattle, and chickens. The well head is in a round concrete pipe about 24" diameter. It has plastic bags of insulation stuffed around the piping. This year I used a heat tape that was already there to keep the outside faucet from freezing. So far so good. We have had a couple zero mornings and many teen mornings, most are now in the twentys so it is working for me. I also filled three 55 gal. drums with water in the barn for a back up supply. Yes they freeze, but I have been able to get water from them if needed. That's what works for me so far.....

 

[MossRoad]

Understood. The contrarians are just having trouble staying on subject. With the CFLs the longer life gives some insurance and also offsets the much higher bulb cost. And you have a lot of light in there.
larry

What's not staying on subject. The CFL did not provide enough heat and the guys water froze. If he had used incandescent on thermostat, or a heater on a thermostat, not only would the pipes not have froze, he would have used less energy overall because the lights would not be on continuously, thus, saving him money and inconvenience.

 

[woodchuckie]

My pump house was described in an earlier post and reading all of this got me to thinking. I don't have a well but an in-line pump to boost the pressure of the rural water system. At the road is the water meter made out of concrete maybe two inches thick and the water line with the meter is one foot(at the most) deep at the bottom. It's not covered on top or bottom (dirt at the bottom of course). There is a 3x5 inch thin metal door in the top for the meter reader. This is the system used for the entire water system of Tuscaloosa and probably most of the South. This doesn't sound like must protection. We do have the occasional cold spell where the lows are in the single digits and the highs below freezing. I've never heard of on freezing. Why, and how is it done up North.

 

[SPYDERLK]

hes using less than 1kwh per day. Saving half that would net under $1.50 a month. After several yrs he could save the cost of putting in the responsive system ... and I assume the lights are only on in Winter so that knocks even continuous ON duty to 25% over the year. Even this neat cheapy would take a couple years to repay.
Thermo Cube - Smarthome Its what Id use along with multiple CHEAP incandescents if I were to focus on it.
larry