High usage on frost free contributed to freezing it?

[Gary Fowler]

Obviously your water lines aren't deep enough otherwise they wouldn't freeze. I have never heard of ice following a water line from the top faucet down into the ground unless the ground is frozen.
The hydrant might freeze if you have a problem with the rock filled drain at the bottom. You likely don't have enough rock below the hydrant drain to hold the water till the ground can absorb it. If you have super frequent use, then you will have to dig a larger rock basin for the drain in order to fix the problem

 

[CobyRupert]

If a properly installed Frost free hydrant is freezing up it's leaking or the surrounding ground is saturated preventing it from draining.

Exactly. Once saturated, the leaking water goes up the standpipe and freezes. If your line is frozen (not the hydrant), then yes the line is too shallow.
Once they freeze- what a pain!!
The problem is you can't tell if there's a slow (or fast) drip at the buried valve (plunger/stopper) that is letting water go by and saturating the ground.
Adjust the stopper too tight and it deforms/rips the stopper. Too loose and it leaks by.

I have a Campbell hydrant that wears out the rubber stopper every 6 months. And the b*stards won't just sell the rubber stopper that wears out, they make you buy the whole kit.
I wish I knew of easier way to thaw them once frozen.

A couple years ago when it froze the line, it busted the elbow under the valve and I had to dig it up. At this point I put in A LOT of crush stone around the weep / drain hole.

I also put in a pressure gauge DOWNSTREAM of the shutoff valve at the source (house basement). The idea being that you can test if the frost free hydrant is leaking by seeing if the pressure goes down over time after turning off the source valve.
But seeing how it's my wife & kid who use the hydrant, and pay no attention to how the handle "feels" and won't performs any weekly pressure tests (or understand them), and I DON"T TRUST THE HYDRANT, we just have a 2 step policy of opening the source valve in the house when the barn hydrant is going to be used and turning both valves off when done.

The other things we did was:
1) Wrap the exposed hydrant pipe in heat tape and insulation and plug in on really cold days (<10F). Yes, the metal hydrant riser pipe is an excellent conductor for the cold to follow. IMHO, they should design part of this riser pipe with a PVC section to prevent this. .

2) Avoid removing snow cover on the area the water line runs under. When my line froze it was where it runs 12' under the lean-to on its way into the barn that gets no snow cover. Since then I've covered the ground over the pipe in the lean-to with old carpets and hay.

 

[PILOON]

I had a rental chalet that froze from time to time when extreme colds or minimal snow cover.
We'd use a small tank that we'd pressurize (10-20 PSI) and heat with a torch.
Attached to the tank was a 3/8 poly tubing and we'd poke it into the water line until we hit the frozen section.
Pressure would push heated water that would thaw out the blockage. While a PIA it did the trick.

Line was not deep due to solid bed rock and that was the main problem.
Later cures were to lay 16' STRIPS OF FOAM BOARD (PINK OR BLUE) and cover with sand.
Annual covering with about 5-6" of straw also worked just fine coupled with strict instructions to not walk over the water line as compressed snow has no insulation properties. (deep snow does a great job)

One installation I looked after we inserted a heated tracer line and that one never froze. Again going deep was not an option.
Some tracing heat lines are designed just for water lines that simply can not be buried, they are thermoplastic and heat only where ice could form hence inexpensive to use but somewhat pricey to purchase. Really foolproof however.

One other thing that helps is to enclose the water line in a 3 or 4 inch plastic non holed drainage tube (black corrugated pipe) as that allows ground heat to travel over the whole length thus warming the shallow areas with ground heat from the deeper buried zones. Ground heat below frost line is generally about 40 deg or so. Again covering with good foam board helps a lot.

I know an oldtimer that used water from a spring and all he did was to cover his waterline with 12" planks and leave his tap slightly open all winter. He never froze his line as moving water will not freeze. (we do get -30's around here)

 

[tcreeley]

Animal traffic, vehicle traffic drives the frost down deeper. In Maine the frost goes down 4' easily. Pipes in my area should be set 5' below the surface. Some say using an 2" inch of foam tube around the pipe is as good as adding a foot of dirt. I can't verify this, but better safe than sorry. Ask around for what the frost depth is in your area or look online.
Goodluck.

 

[bcp]

Moving water will freeze, but then it isn't moving any more.

File:Frozen Waterfall Ohiopyle State Park.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Kind of like "You'll never get stuck if you just keep moving."

Bruce

 

[Rustyiron]

'round here, they say an inch of foam (over the pipe) is = to a foot of cover (earth). Don't use the white foam.

 

[PILOON]

'round here, they say an inch of foam (over the pipe) is = to a foot of cover (earth). Don't use the white foam.

Agree with U and I like about 12"-16" wide strips centered over the pipe.
I like that width as it will prevent the cold from 'curling around the edges'.
Pink or blue foam for sure.

Our city is now using foam over the culverts now whenever they install new or replace old pipes.
Makes for earlier thaws and later freezing thus less steam thawing come spring.

As to white, I totally agree as it drinks water.

 

[RNeumann]

Animal traffic, vehicle traffic drives the frost down deeper. In Maine the frost goes down 4' easily. Pipes in my area should be set 5' below the surface. Some say using an 2" inch of foam tube around the pipe is as good as adding a foot of dirt. I can't verify this, but better safe than sorry. Ask around for what the frost depth is in your area or look online.
Goodluck.

Yep the traffic drives the frost deeper. We went and extra 12-18" under the driveway. Remember fluffy snow is a good insulator.
Where I'm at it's 1" of R5 = 1' soil in areas that can't get the depth because of rock etc. It doesn't have to wrap the pipe just a foot or so wide over the pipe. But ever local inspector wants something different!

In extreme cold I'd be running a little water in the house all night so you don't have a repeat with frozen lines this winter.

Now my SWAG theory- with leakage around a hydrant (or somewhere else) that didn't have proper drainage the tendency would be for the water to seek the path of least resistance. The least resistance could be along the pipe as that soil was "disturbed" when the line went in. With water running along the waterline it would be a better conductor of the cold air and potentially lead to the frozen waterline.

 

[greenmojo]

2) Avoid removing snow cover on the area the water line runs under. When my line froze it was where it runs 12' under the lean-to on its way into the barn that gets no snow cover. Since then I've covered the ground over the pipe in the lean-to with old carpets and hay.

You nailed it!

I didn't realize it until this afternoon when I woke up, the 75' distance of pipe we unfroze is almost exactly to the foot, how much snow I cleared down to dirt just before we had 5 days of -20 wind chill up here.

I cleared away the snow, and then the wind did its job and cleared away the temperature from the earth, no doubt all the way down to the line.

~Moses

 

[Egon]

Maybe what happens is small ice pellets form and are carried up the pipe when water is used. These build up over time and create a blockage and resultant pressure build up. The line then turns to solid ice almost instantaneously??