Pex tube and a frozen floor...

[PILOON]

I have thawed many a frozen water line.
While I have a home made steamer for the job which is a pressure vessel 110ac heated I have also used a wallpaper steamer.
My delivery system consists of 3/8 polyB line that I insert into the frozen water line.
As steam is generated pressure builds up and melts ice in the pipe line and naturally water flows out.
It is so efficient that I can feed the steam line hand over hand.
Most rental stores carry wallpaper steamers.
Good luck.

 

[CurlyDave]

As I understand this, your original plan was to have a wood stove with a homemade added boiler in your shop with a water/glycol mix circulating in the floor to warm the shop. Is this sort of right so far?

Right now, the water in the pex has probably frozen. My belief is that the minimum cost thing to do right now is to just run the wood stove for heat and get a plain old fan to circulate air and even out the temperature inside. If you get it warm enough you will probably melt the water in the pex. Once you accomplish that fill the pex with the right glycol/water mix and then quit circulating it until spring when you can use plain water, or even compressed air and a stethoscope to find the leaks you may have.

Personally, I would think long and hard about abandoning the pex and just using a wood stove to heat the area. I prefer a heat source with no flames inside a shop because of the potential for igniting solvent, gasoline or other vapors in the shop, but when you put the wood stove to heat the water for your circulating system in the shop, you gave up that advantage.

 

[mx842]

As I understand this, your original plan was to have a wood stove with a homemade added boiler in your shop with a water/glycol mix circulating in the floor to warm the shop. Is this sort of right so far?

Right now, the water in the pex has probably frozen. My belief is that the minimum cost thing to do right now is to just run the wood stove for heat and get a plain old fan to circulate air and even out the temperature inside. If you get it warm enough you will probably melt the water in the pex. Once you accomplish that fill the pex with the right glycol/water mix and then quit circulating it until spring when you can use plain water, or even compressed air and a stethoscope to find the leaks you may have.

Personally, I would think long and hard about abandoning the pex and just using a wood stove to heat the area. I prefer a heat source with no flames inside a shop because of the potential for igniting solvent, gasoline or other vapors in the shop, but when you put the wood stove to heat the water for your circulating system in the shop, you gave up that advantage.

That's what I have going on but that was not the plan. My plan all along was to install a hot water heater to heat the floor while I had the chance to build my boiler. Because of this great economy our king has provided for us I didn't get enough work in over the summer to get that far. I had been working for insulation and OSB board trying to get as much of that out of the way as I could so that it wouldn't take as many BTU's to keep the shop from freezing up but I ran out of summer before I got all the inside walls up. That left me short of money for the water heater, materials for my big door and my entrance door to my office space.

Along the way I had come across this old wood stove and I did entertain the idea of maybe working on it a little to see if I could make something out of it that would be suitable until I could get to the boiler. I didn't want a stove in the shop for the very reasons you mentioned and had started to build another lean to shed off the back for my compressor, and a acid dip tank. I figured I could add a few more feet to it and put this stove in it so I could keep all the smoke and trash that wood brings into the picture out of the main part of the building. I bought the medal siding but by the time I got that things got really slow and never was able to finish that part or the other parts of the building closed up before old man winter came roaring into town. This global warming we having right now really opened up a big ol can of whop azz on me and and all I have been able to do is try and keep dumping as much warm water into the floor as I can get in there until this is over. It has warmed up today but I'm afraid to shut it down to work on it to get more heat out of the boiler because at this point it will take a total remake of the system. I thought I could get enough heat out of it by going with an updraft gasification setup but that didn't work out as well as I had planned because of the size limitations I had to work with. I'm still playing around with the air input but I don't think I'll ever get a suitable outcome without adding another section to the bottom of the stove and going with a down draft style setup. I think I have enough material on hand to do this but it will take some time to build and work out the bugs. It's warm today and is supposed to be warm tomorrow but that is supposed to change late Sunday and another cold spell is heading in with more snow Monday or Tuesday. I'm just going to have to ride it out and try to keep up for now with hopes the weather breaks before I do.LOL

 

[Jerry9N]

I would guess that you don't have all of the air out of the system. last one I worked on it took me three hours to bleed each zone. shouldn't have much trouble with pex after it thaws, I've seen it freeze and then thaw and then work perfectly. If you were working on it and there was any chance for air to enter the floor it will block flow back through just like ice will.
I'm a Union Pipefitter and certified HVAC tech and licensed mechanical contractor.
good Luck,
Jerry

 

[mx842]

I would guess that you don't have all of the air out of the system. last one I worked on it took me three hours to bleed each zone. shouldn't have much trouble with pex after it thaws, I've seen it freeze and then thaw and then work perfectly. If you were working on it and there was any chance for air to enter the floor it will block flow back through just like ice will.
I'm a Union Pipefitter and certified HVAC tech and licensed mechanical contractor.
good Luck,
Jerry

My manifolds have air bleeders and on top of that I have the return water dumping into an open water tank/ barrel so any air missed by the air bleeders should end up there. The loops are all working fine now. I did have three that were frozen but they all thawed out and started passing water after a couple days of running the stove. I guess I dodged that bullet for now and as long as I can keep the stove eating wood and my pump pumping the somewhat heated water that this old girl is able put out I should be alright for now. As soon as the hard freezing is over I can work on the stove some more in hopes of getting it up to temp.

On a good note........I did see the floor surface temp in one section yesterday all the way up to 60 degrees But it did warm up some yesterday outside and it's supposed to be warm today as well. I fired it last night but I think I'm going to let it burn itself out today and hopefully this afternoon when I get back home It will be cooled down enough that I can work on it a little. I want to remove the door and extend the opening out about 12 inches to get some of the really hot temps off the door itself. Right now it's not closing like it should and I don't know if it is warped or it's just the hinges that are worn and not letting it close like it should. Hopefully if it is warped I can adjust the hinges or the door opening itself to get it to close tighter than it does now. I have to redo all that stuff anyway so it's worth the try. I want to save that door if it is possible because that is the hardest part on the stove to make and get to work properly. Hopefully setting it back away from the flame will help.

I also want to work on plumbing in some air lines that will run along the sides of the stove to get the air distributed equally down both sides of the stove. Right now I'm blowing air into one of the bottom draft tubes that someone put in the bottom part of the stove. The problem with that is that one side burns hot while the other side burns cooler cutting heat to the boiler tubes in the heat exchanger in half. If I can even that part out I think this old stove will get me through this winter to a time where I can work on it some more or start on my new build that one day I hope to have working for both the house and the shop.

 

[mx842]

I have thawed many a frozen water line.
While I have a home made steamer for the job which is a pressure vessel 110ac heated I have also used a wallpaper steamer.
My delivery system consists of 3/8 polyB line that I insert into the frozen water line.
As steam is generated pressure builds up and melts ice in the pipe line and naturally water flows out.
It is so efficient that I can feed the steam line hand over hand.
Most rental stores carry wallpaper steamers.
Good luck.

Me too....back a few years ago we used to thaw pipes out with our welder. Me and a buddy used to make beer money going around the country side looking for houses that had the pump house tops off. That was a good sign those poor people had no water and most of them were glad to have their pipes thawed out. Those were the good old days when all pipes were medal and as long as the medal was in reasonably good condition we would have them thawed out in no time and on our way to the next place. We built up a pretty good client base after a couple winters but it soon got to be almost like a job when people started wanting us to come over and thaw out their water pipe at three in the morning and that takes a lot of the fun out of it.

 

[MacLawn]

mx, you gave an excellent explanation of a forum above a few posts back! Plus, you described about how I do things too. Not much money, time, just trying to fix, maintain, make things work. Not to mention now I've got to fix or replace my parking brake cables that are locking rear brakes on my two trucks. Both happened at same time! See? Just when I need to work on my frozen Pex, something like this jumps in ye way! Oh well got to tackle the old squeaking wheel...

 

[mx842]

mx, you gave an excellent explanation of a forum above a few posts back! Plus, you described about how I do things too. Not much money, time, just trying to fix, maintain, make things work. Not to mention now I've got to fix or replace my parking brake cables that are locking rear brakes on my two trucks. Both happened at same time! See? Just when I need to work on my frozen Pex, something like this jumps in ye way! Oh well got to tackle the old squeaking wheel...

Awh man....I know the squeaky wheel thing well. The old squeaky wheel is partly to blame for my frozen pex. Broken washing machines, leaking hot water heater lawn mower breaks in the middle of grass growing season not to mention me falling out of the barn ceiling when the ladder cut out from under me on the slick concrete floor and breaking my knee cap in three places, dislocated shoulder, along with a big old knot on the side of my hard head. To make matters worst when I woke up, I woke up cussing the ladder for pulling this lowlife deed on me and after kicking it a time or two just to get even, I broke my dat gummed little toe in the process. That hurt worst than my knee. :laughing: That ordeal set me back almost a month.

Sorry about your trucks. It's kinda weird both would crap out at the same time but I guess that's how old murphy's law works sometimes. Sometimes it's hard to keep a cool tool and you just want to throw in the towel when things like that pile up on you but you just have to hold your chin up and keep plugging away cause who else is going to do it if you don't? :thumbsup:

 

[mx842]

I went to my buddy the plumbers house Sunday and begged some more fittings and pieces of black iron pipe to make up my air supply to the stove. He hooked me up with some schedule 80 1" pipe and a bunch of really heavy duty fittings that will hopefully hold up to the heat inside the firebox at least for the rest of this heating season. I also cleaned out the stove, removed the door, blocked off those two big air supply pipes in the bottom of the stove. There was another smaller plate in the center bottom of the stove that I removed and want to cut a hole in it to weld a coupler through it to hook the inside to the outside pipping. I had planned to use the 3" air tubes that were already in the bottom of the stove but decided it would be easier to just go into the stove from one point in the center and T off from there. I need to get a 11/4" hole drilled through the plate which means I'll have to dig around and see if I can find my tooling box that has one of my boring bars so I can open up a hole big enough to get the coupler through. I don't have a drill bit larger than 3/4 handy so I guess that would be my best bet. Just finding it will take longer than doing the job but I need to start getting all my stuff together anyway.

Anyway hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures up before long with another progress report. I was going to take some yesterday but the battery was dead in my camera which started another search for the charger.LOL It seems it never ends......

 

[mx842]

I finally got the door on and the front plate mounted to the stove. Although it isn't finished by a long shot I had to get it running because the last couple nights have been cold and it was supposed to get in the teens last night. What a pain.....I had only run the stove about 2 weeks and the connector pipe had already filled up with smelly, nasty black creosote. I had to take the inside and outside pipe off then pull out the connector and it was almost packed full. I gotta find some dry wood.

Once I got the stove pipe cleaned out it started up and heated up nicely as long as I kept the fan running. Right now there is no draft in the bottom of the stove other than the pipe sticking out that I am going to hook up to the blower motor. I think the 1" sq tube is going to work nicely but I do wish I had drilled larger holes than the 1/4" holes I drilled. The next time I shut it down I can open them up a little. I need to check it out to see how much the heat effects that light tube anyway.

I still wish I had made a whole new face for the front of the stove rather than the patch work I have going on now. The door opening is too high up on the front and I get smoke and flame at times that wants to shoot out at me when I'm adding wood or just want to look inside to see whats going on. Now I know why someone put that stewpid flapper that was hanging half way down into the door opening that I had to fight when filling the firebox. That was the first thing I ripped out when I started this last mod but I might have to dig it back up out of the junk pile and put it back on the door or just get used to a little smoke in the shop. Hopefully I'll be able to get the air pipe plumbed up to my pump and come up with some kind of a latch system for the door today and I guess I need to come up with some kind of bottom draft that I can control somehow. I don't know if I will get this all done today because I need to get some wood on the porch for my stove in the house and I need to cut a trailer load of wood for the wood hog in the shop. So much to do so little time.

Something else I want to do is add an oil drip tube to the top of the stove so I can get some use out of all the old burnt motor oil I have in my storage tank. I was looking at another thread that someone else had on here where they did the same thing and the idea does look promising especially now that I have air piped into the stove.