Frozen pipes

[lurker]

Bit of a story to warn others:
My 93 year old father in law is currently in a nursing home for what we hope is a short spell before going back home.
We visited him yesterday and afterwards went to his house to check all was well; we found devastation! He lives in an ex council bungalow and two pipe compression fittings in the loft had been burst open by frozen pipes, both were running full bore.
All the ceilings were down and the place badly flooded.
I could not find a stop valve and after a lot of faffing with his manky tools remade the compression joints. Once this was done I hunted for the stop valve, the one in the street feeds several houses so could not close that. Finally found it buried behind a kitchen refit (I had to wreck the drawer unit to get at it). Then it was seized solid!

Lessons:
The bungalow ceilings are insulated in the loft floor like most properties, but not the roof, so the roof space (containing all the pipework) was very cold. When he went into the home, I turned down the heating to on all the while but 9 degrees. With hindsight I ought to have half opened the loft hatch.

After the first 5 minutes panic, I switched the power off at the consumer unit: this ought to have been the first thing I did.

Tomorrow I intend to go around my own house checking the stop valves run free and also marking their positions. And double checking the wife knows were they all are. And the one in the street; I have a long “key” for this but would struggle finding it quickly, so that’s going to change.

Will be discussing with my sons so we all three of us know where to find stuff in each of our houses.

Footnote: due to so many insurance claims its impossible to get through to insurers. At least we have “made safe” but not sure how long it will be before we can get the loss assessors in.

 

[Stanleymonkey]

That sounds awful. Good advise though, might go an buy a handle for the street one and hang it in the cupboard under the stairs.

Good luck with the clean up.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I hope you get it sorted, but I'm always surprised insurance companies pay out when uninsulated pipes burst - they wouldn't pay out if your car slid off the road with bald tyres or it was stolen when you left the ignition keys in. It's totally preventable, why should my insurance rise relentlessly to cover people who don't take any precautions? A friend, a professional landlord had £40,000s worth of work done when his burst when he was on holiday - he got most upset when I suggested it was his fault for not having any pipe insulation at all.

 

[julianf]

I spent some of yesterday working on next doors burst pipe.

It was a lead pipe (the houses are old) so had survived many many winters prior to this one.

There will be no insurance claim, but, if there needed to be one, I'd suggest that it was not my neighbours error.

 

[Racers]

That sounds very bad lurker, I worked with someone who went away over winter who had a leak in the loft, they got a call to say water was coming out of the upstairs windows, it took a year to get back in and they lost everything.

I hope you get it sorted quickly and painlessly.

Pete

 

[lurker]

I hope you get it sorted, but I'm always surprised insurance companies pay out when uninsulated pipes burst - they wouldn't pay out if your car slid off the road with bald tyres or it was stolen when you left the ignition keys in. It's totally preventable, why should my insurance rise relentlessly to cover people who don't take any precautions? A friend, a professional landlord had £40,000s worth of work done when his burst when he was on holiday - he got most upset when I suggested it was his fault for not having any pipe insulation at all.

All the pipes in the loft had that foam wrap around insulation.
my assumption is the pipe run that failed had a section running close to the eves and that was the bit that got cold, expanded and the resultant pressure found a weakness further upstream.

 

[lurker]

That sounds very bad lurker, I worked with someone who went away over winter who had a leak in the loft, they got a call to say water was coming out of the upstairs windows, it took a year to get back in and they lost everything.

I hope you get it sorted quickly and painlessly.

Pete

thanks Pete,
Our main concern is we can get is sorted before F in L wants to come home.
We are going to have to lie to him these next few weeks because If he finds out it will kill him.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Sorry to hear that, Jim. And a similar thing has happened to us. W have sold mum's bungalow, but not yet exchanged contracts. A neighbour rang my bro on Saturday to say that the side was covered in ice "like a frozen waterfall". Went over yesterday to find it raining inside. No ceilings down, but we had to take the hall carpet out and mop up a bucketful or two of water.
When we left it, the mains water was off and the heating was set to 12C 24/24. But someone has turned the water on and the gas off at the mains. Which means that the place got cold, a pipe burst in or at the boiler (in the roof space) and as it was the water inlet, instead of the damage being limited to the contents of the system, it has be free-running for days.
As far as we know, only the Estate Agent and the Surveyor for the buyers have been in.
So I have a very difficult call to make in an hour or two.