Preventing Pipe Freeze

[Kristin Caras]

I have a property that has 3/4 units heat turned on. Unfortunately, a tenant left and didn’t pay his electric bill. The soonest the electric company can come out and turn on heat to the unit is 8 days from today.

The property is in upstate New York and it is going to be below freezing on and off for the whole week.

With 3/4 of the building heated, do you think there is reason to worry that the pipes may freeze before then? Would space heaters temporarily help?

Any advice is appreciated.

[Jim K.]

You turn off the main water supply at the meter. You turn off the water heater. You then open up both hot and cold valves on every spigot, starting from the one located highest in the property, ending with the one located lowest. You pour a cup of vehicle antifreeze into every bathroom drain, two cups into every kitchen drain, four cups into the top of every toilet and flush each toilet one last time. Two cups in every floor drain if the property has them. If the property is hot-water heated, you open up the radiator valves on every radiator and drain the system from the compression tank in the basement and THEN add your antifreeze to the drain you used.

If you have a property manager in the Northeast and he doesn't know how to winterize a property like this, he's a pretty piss-poor property manager.

You would also probably be fine if you left the cold water on a basement faucet steadily running, the slowest continuous stream you coule adjust the faucet to produce just abive dripping. The reason this works is that it protects the most vulnerable point in the system, the line from the local water supply network to the meter.

Now you can say you got the same advice from Pittsburgh. And I grew up in upstate New York, so we've come full circle.