Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations well pumps freezing

I'm directing this question to those of you who live in cold climates and has nothing to do with fish. For several years, I had to replace my well pump housing after our annual cold spells. I don't live on the land and in the winter, I blow the lines on my trailer house, dip all of the water from the toilet and put RV anti freeze in the sink and tub traps. My well is in a well house outside the house and now, when I leave after a weekend, I now shut off the water from the holding tank to the inside pump and pressure tank. I then unscrew the pump plug and drain it. When I show the next weekend, I reverse the process. Pain in the butt! That works OK but I've been wondering what measures people in really cold climates take. I've tried heat tape and keeping a light bulb burning and that didn't work. What do you guys do? Is there an easier or better way?

Dave,

After years of being a "weekender" I've finally arrived at an acceptable solution which works,is easy and reliable...in our relatively mild winters.

For the well house, I have an automatic timer that is set to come on at midnight and shut off at 6:00 am. It provides power to a small electric heater that keeps the temps well above freezing all the time even when not operating. It does not cost much and does the job. The risk is loosing power while I'm not there. In especially cold weather, I ask a neighbor to check on the set up daily to insure that power is present. I'm looking into one of those remote cameras that will show the temperatures in the well house 24/7 on my home pc in Houston.

For the house, I have installed a drain valve that completely drains the water from the lines with one turn. I also leave electric heat on a low temp during my absense.

Dave:

Our horse barn is unheated and has it's own well. I put all the above-ground stuff (P-tank, P-switch, assorted pipes, and a hot water tank) in an enclosure inside the room we keep feed in. Hot and cold water freeze-out hydrants go out one side of the enclosure into the wash stall (those horse people truly love hot water to wash with in the Winter!). We cover the hose bibs on the outside of the hydrants with styrofoam filled covers when its real cold so we don't have to thaw the knobs (even when frozen, there is no permanant damage).

The walls of the enclosure are 2"x4" frame with the 3.5" spaces filled with assorted insulation remnants (fiberglass, foam, etc.) and a minimum of 1/2" plywood on each side of the frame. The floor is a 4" thick concrete slab that sets on 2" of foam insulation and has a 3.5" thick layer of foam on top; there is a 4" PVC conduit through the slab for the water pipe to enter the enclosure. All cracks and holes for wiring were filled with silicone bathtub sealer to eliminate cold air (or vermin) coming in from the outside. We keep the "pump house" in the 50 to 60 degree range in the Winter with a 1350/1500 Watt milkhouse heater (fairly low air temp, fairly high air flow compared with many 1500W heaters, to lessen the temp of hot spots and try to eliminate fire risk).

Milkhouse heaters have a built in thermostat that usually works pretty good for 2 or 3 years (when the pumphouse heater gets flakey we buy a new one and move the old one to another application, like heating my wife's bathroom to about 400 degrees). The waste heat off the 30A hotwater tank is also inside the pumphouse and if the door is sealed well (with 2-3 layers of the "foam rope" window insulation available for older houses) the milkhouse heater only runs when it is really cold (teens or lower).

I installed an indoor/outdoor dual thermometer outside the pumphouse with the "outdoor" sensor near the floor inside so we can monitor the pumphouse temperature. Switches for the heater and hot water tank are external so they can be turned on/off as needed/desired without unsealing the door. This setup does a good job of keeping the water system thawed with a minimum of electricity expense.

P.S. Ahia ain't "really cold" compared to where Wood lives, but we are farther North than the great state of Texas.

My big concern is the one ML has. Electric power in the country is not a sure thing or maybe I ought to say reliable in the winter or even when it rains.

Trailer house plumbing sags so I'm not comfortable putting a drain line on the house. Some years back I found a double ended hose connection that screws onto a threaded kitchen faucet. I then screw on a device that has an air valve into it and use a small compressor to actually blow the lines. I found it at an RV supply house but haven't been able to find a spare since. I dread something happening to the only one I have.

My "well house" is the end of a dug up service station gasoline tank with a door and top vent added. It works OK but doesn't hold heat very well.

Theo, we usually get one or maybe two single digit nights per year. However, years ago, Joe Theismann almost got frostbite when playing in the Cotton Bowl when Texas and Notre Dame met. It almost ended his pro career befor it started. He said, in an interview, that he had spent his life in the cold country but had never been so cold as going to Texas during a "blue Norther:.

Dave, I think your best bet to be safe is to continue shutting the system down, blowing out lines and draining the pump. In an un-insulated building even with an electric heater it may still freeze and you also risk freezing in the event of power outages as mentioned. I would try to gear the system for ease of draining, maybe remove the plug on the pump and thread in a small brass ball valve to ease in pump draining.

People up here that have weekend cabins go through the same procedures. We are usually safe between May and September although last night was down to 5c. :rolleyes: It's serious business here for those of us that live out in the country if power goes out in winter. Woodstoves and generators are a must. I still have pipes freeze occasionally even with all the precautions. Heck, I'm happy if my vehicle starts in the morning, block heater and all.

I think your method is still the best, although a pain in the butt as you say.

We lost power for 5 days at Christmas last year and used the generator once a day to heat up the air and water in the pumphouse at the barn to keep it above freezing; I understand your power loss concern.

For our house well, all this equipment is in a 7'x7' concrete block hole in the ground with 3" of insulation on top. This lets ground warmth keep everything from freezing in all but the very coldest weather. Even then, we don't have to heat it, just keep putting fresh 52 deg water in the pressure tank as we use the water that's cooled off in the house. But putting it all below ground is a LOT more work.

Dave,

I have a well pump and tank in our sap house that is housed in a 3'x 6' enclosure. Walls are 6" insulation and the hinged plywood top has a piece of 2" rigid insulation attached to it. We have a 14" frost-free sillcock installed for water. To prevent freeze-ups, we use two 100W heavy service light bulbs which are thermostatically controlled. I live on the property so it is checked on a regular basis during winter. No freeze-ups so far.

Russ

To all,

Meadowlark mentioned a remote camera above to monitor things and I thought of a device we have used where I work to monitor outdoor freezers. The device is called a Sensaphone and we ordered ours through an Ag supply store because I think that ranchers use them to monitor remote barn conditions. They only need a phone line and an AC outlet to operate and you can attach multiple sensors to them (moisture, temperature, even sound, etc.) and then they will call you if your set parameters are exceeded. For instance, you can have it call you if the temperature drops below 40 degrees F. (or whatever value you choose) in your pump house. Or, if a very loud noise is detected, it can call you. The fact that it uses phone lines is a plus because it will work on battery in the event of a power failure, and the phone lines might still be working...but I guess that depends on the area you are in. You can set these to dial multiple phone numbers and repeat the messages until someone receives the call and "acknowledges" that the message was received by pressing a series of numbers on your phone. They are easy to set up and quite reliable. I understand that they make a model called a "cabin sitter" that has fewer connections for input if you only want temperature and sound. You can also dial into these devices just to check the status at any time. Here is a link to the model that we use, and you can browse around their site if you want to look at some of their other models.

http://www.sensaphone.com/sensaphone-1100.html

bigfrog,

That's an interesting product. Thanks for posting. Did you see a price tag?

With respect to the price, it has been a while since we purchased the Sensaphones, but I think an 1104, which was a unit that would accept up to four sensing devices, was about $200-$250. I think they can be set to trigger on sound and on temperature at that price. They also have a mic, so you can just call them and listen to what is going on...like to detect a noisy motor. We paid a bit more to get remote temperature sensors too, because we were doing two freezers and a refrigerator. The additional sensors (moisture, external temp, etc.) were very reasonable as I recall. If you need a figure closer than that, I will be glad to look it up. One thing I really like about these is how programmable they are. For instance with temperature, I can set it so that a freezer has to be above a certain temperature (say 15 degrees F) for a certain time (say 30 minutes) so that you don't get nuisance calls during the defrost cycle. When it does call, you can set how many different numbers to call, how often to try, and how many total calls it will make. It may sound complicated (like a VCR on steroids!), but the setup is really quite simple. I can see where if you had electric and a phone line in a pump house, you could set it to call you if the temperature dropped below freezing for any period of time you chose. These really work very well, and I promise I have no stock in the company .

bigfrog,

Thanks for that info. I think I'll get one. I guess it requires its own dedicated phone line or share the regular house line? Since I'm not there when I need the system, sharing the house line would certainly be just fine.

Pretty neat! Thanks!

You can share your regular house phone line with this device. It just takes a regular modular phone plugin just as if you were plugging in an answering machine or any other single line device to your existing phone system. All you would need to do is to run a phone line to your water pump shed and attach a standard modular phone receptacle. The Sensaphone will plug directly into the receptacle. With respect to sharing the phone line, that is what we do here. Now, if someone happened to be actually talking on the phone in the house when a parameter was triggered, the Sensaphone just couldn't dial out, but it would keep trying according to the dialout pattern you have set. In fact, I believe that you would hear it attempting to dial while you were talking. The only other situation that I could see occurring if you share your phone line, would be if you were at your place, had the Sensaphone on, and someone called you. If you don't pick up your telephone quickly enough, the Sensaphone would answer. This is the feature that allows you to call it from a remote site and check the status of the sensors you have connected. For instance, you can call this unit any time and it will report the temperature by voice on the sensor. However, the number of rings that occur before the Sensaphone picks up can be set as well and you could set that to a very high (10 or more) number, or just disable the Sensaphone while you are at your place. (There is a standby mode that can be activated quickly on the unit.) I thought of the name of the company where we bought our units. It was QC Supply at www.qcsupply.com. I just checked their web site and the price on an 1104 is $339, so the price has come up a bit. You might do a search on Sensaphone and come up with a better price.

Good Luck.