Pex tube and a frozen floor...

[slowzuki]

If the building isn't insulated and no other heat source get some tarps etc on the floor asap! Hay, straw, fiberglass anything with insulation value to retain heat from your zones and from the subgrade.

If the PEX freezes in one location and spreads from there and the water is free to leave you'll be ok, but if it freezes at the ends to make plugs then freezes in the closed loop it will crack up your floor!

The pump will likely not work to thaw the frozen lines as once the flow stops its only circulating maybe 10 pipe diameters in from the flow past the tee. Heat from adjacent zones or heat from elsewhere will be needed to thaw the pipes. You can lay hose on top of the slab and cover with insulation and run hot water through it or you can make a temp pex loop or black poly loop if you keep temps down.


Longer the air above is below freezing the more the floor will freeze!

 

[MacLawn]

Oh me, I'm longing for spring!!

 

[mx842]

Oh me, I'm longing for spring!!

Me too!! This has been a cold hard winter around here. I think I said this before but normally we will get a week or so of temps that stay in the mid 20's and not get above freezing that comes right around Christmas. Sometimes a week or so before but usually it happens shortly after Santa comes to town. The rest of the time the average temp is in the low to mid 40's. It will get cold at night but will warm up just enough during the day to keep pipes from freezing solid. This year global warming has kept us in a deep freezer.LOL

I did hear yesterday that after this big winter storm we are going to get later today.....10 to 12 inches of snow predicted moves on out of the way the rest of Feb. is supposed to have above average temps, then when March comes rolling around hopefully the really cold stuff will be long gone and we will see spring not to long afterwards.

 

[Xfaxman]

-------------------------------
I did hear yesterday that after this big winter storm we are going to get later today.....10 to 12 inches of snow predicted moves on out of the way the rest of Feb. is supposed to have above average temps, then when March comes rolling around hopefully the really cold stuff will be long gone and we will see spring not to long afterwards.

 

[crazyal]

This is how my boiler is set up. The output of the boiler is a short loop of 1 1/4" steel pipe. It has it's own pump. Coming off of the main loop are two branches, one supply and one return. The main loop will flow even if the branches aren't flowing. There's an automatic mixing valve connecting the two branches together. There's a pump that supplies the PEX lines. The main loop and boiler can heat up to normal operating temps so you don't need to worry that you are plugging up your boiler. The supply branch will sip what water is needed off of the main loop. The mixing valve prevents water that's too hot from entering the heating lines. The system will not flow water through the PEX lines until the boiler is at temp.

 

[mx842]

I haven't been back for awhile cause my computer blew up and I found out what I had been fearing all along with this old boiler that the tubes in the boiler had long ago rusted out and is probably why I am now the proud owner. I kept wanting to blame all that extra moisture in the stack on the wet wood I was burning but that wasn't the problem. I made me a brush for my drill to clean out the tubes and one swipe down into the first tube I got a good solid stream of water shooting down into the heater. The good thing was it hasn't been that cold for the past week or so so it wasn't any danger of anything freezing up again so I just cut off the water to the boiler and have just been firing the firebox once a day to keep a little heat in the place until this winter is over.

After I got over the crying spell I did pipe in a line down one side of the firebox out the front and over to the other side and back through the firebox an out the back just to see if I could get any heat into the water that way. I haven't tried it yet to see what will happen cause it's been fairly warm the past few days. Hopefully this will help to keep the floor safe if it gets really cold again. I guess I'll scrap this whole thing and start working on my new SS boiler I have planned and hopefully have that done before next winter.

 

[radioman]

when it rains - it pours. I feel for you. I been there. Can you get a couple coils of copper tubing that you can just lay on top of stove and circulate water through that? I'd be doing that right now to see if there are any leaks in pex in floor. Better find it now before next polar vortex hits you next week and it is coming.....

 

[ericher69]

I am not that familiar with in floor heating but the folks that I know that use them use a closed system with antifreeze in the water to keep this from happening. I was wondering why the OP didn't do the same thing. If he had, he could have not worried about lines freezing without heat.

Same reason a co-worker of mine used water. Doing it the proper way is expensive; water is cheap... Co-worker cannot let his system shut down in the winter when he goes away therefore always ends up bugging someone to feet his fire box because he didn't want to spend the required amount of money to PROPERLY get the system online! Sent from my iPhone 5s 64Gb using TractorByNet

 

[Raspy]

Same reason a co-worker of mine used water. Doing it the proper way is expensive; water is cheap... Co-worker cannot let his system shut down in the winter when he goes away therefore always ends up bugging someone to feet his fire box because he didn't want to spend the required amount of money to PROPERLY get the system online! Sent from my iPhone 5s 64Gb using TractorByNet

I'm afraid you are missing the point. MX was in the process of building his system and experimenting with how to do it. The weather turned and he let it freeze, so he shared that, and wondered online what would happen. Its too easy to criticize and say he didn't do it properly. What is proper?

I thank him for sharing and letting us know how it all turned out. We all had a chance to learn something. If nobody ever experimented with designs we'd all still be sitting around campfires instead of living in modern homes.

 

[pmsmechanic]

Right about now with the lines flowing water I'd be very tempted to just blow the lines out with air and use your "boiler" to just keep the place half ways warm without worrying about the water in the lines. Just a thought. It would take the pressure off of you.