Hi, you guys have been very helpful in the past, so I'm hoping you have some good suggestions for us. My question has a few parts.

We live in eastern Washington State, so our winters are cold and dry. Temps can be below freezing for much of Nov, Dec, Jan, and even Feb. We built a house 3 1/2 years ago that has a septic system. Pressurized drain field. For the first time the system froze last week. When the septic guy came out, he said our indexing valve had frozen. The indexing valve rotates what part of the drainfield the effluent come out of, apparently. This valve is housed in a riser, with no insulation around it. We asked why it hadn't frozen in the past 3 winters, and the response was that possibly in past years we have gotten snow on the ground prior to the REALLY cold weather, and this snow provided some insulation. Sounds reasonable. The fix was to put some fiberglass insulation in the riser once they got the indexing valve thawed.

Questions: Does this make sense to you, and if yes, should this riser have been insulated when they installed the system, to prevent this from happening in the first place? The guy who came to fix is the installer. He's been in business for 20+ years. We are concerned that this might not be enough to prevent further freezing, and also we were charged $415 for this service. A service call of $85, plus $300 in labor for 2 guys to come "thaw" my indexing valve (using MY hot water and MY bucket), plus $30 for materials (a 1'x1' piece of fiberglass insulation.) So, in short, we are wondering if you think the charges are fair, especially in light of the fact that this guy didn't insulate this riser to begin with, and also want to make sure this will actually fix the problem. Any input will be greatly appreciated. We want to be fair to our repairman, but don't have a really good feeling about this particular visit.

Thanks,

Stacey

I have to be careful here because I have no experience with that type of system, we don't do that type around here. Find some other systems like yours and see how they were done. If they are common in your area, they should be able to be made reliable.

It does sound to me like he may have had a boat payment due, but there are things I don't know about costs in your area. Travel and timing comes to mind. If you aren't going to kindly confront him about it, I suggest you ask around and find another plumber to call for further service needs, and then chalk this one off to education. At least you know how to do it the next time it freezes.

So this indexing valve is sort of like the system you would install in a sprinkler system, to control "zones," and is housed in a riser like that. Seems to me that if the area is prone to freezing, that the riser should have been insulated to begin with, and it was just timing with the snow that prevented it freezing before this. We had a really cold snap here the previous week, and no snow, so I imagine the ground froze. He operates probably 15 minutes away from me, maybe 20.

I live in Florida where we don't have cold weather ,(in 80's testerday) but I do have a question. Why wasn't everything installed beneath the frost line from the git-go? Regards, Tom

Well, that's kind of where we are going with this, too. When the system was installed by this guy, shouldn't he have made sure something like a cold snap before the snow season wouldn't be able to do what it did? We were really surprised to get this bill, because we thought with him being the expert, the indexing valves should have been installed in a manner that wouldn't allow freezing. The temps got down to the mid teens for about 4-5 day, but that isn't unusual for this area. We've had cold snaps in the past that I can remember occurring prior to snow, just not since we've had this system.

So, do you think the insulation they tucked in the riser will keep it from freezing, or does it need to be dug up and put farther into the ground? BTW, thanks for your quick answers, I always get good guidance from your site! It makes it easier to have a rational conversation with the contractors, when I feel like I know at least a little about the subject :-)

Anything you don't want to possibly freeze must be buried below the frost level. Water lines fall into that category. :) Here in PA that is 3 feet. I have heard that in southern AL it is something like 1 inch. That being said, if there is some insulating material above the water line (or septic line) you can get away with a bit less depth. I had to run a line from a new well to our house 20 some years ago. The back hoe encountered a 5 ft section of solid rock at about 18 inches while digging the trench. IIRC I ran the pipe in Armaflex over the rock and put some 1-1/2" styrofoam board a couple of inches above the pipe in that section and never had any trouble. I would rather get it down to correct depth, but there was no way we were going to blast 20 ft from the house.

Without seeing some pictures, I don't know what to recommend to you to make your plumbing more frostproof. As I said earlier, at least you know how do do it yourself the next time. Summer definitely is the time to fix this though.

I really doubt 12" x 12" piece of fiberglass insulation will keep it from freezing. I would call manufacturer of the valve and ask them to provide me with proper installation instructions for this particular valve in your part of the country.

Labor charges do not seem to me to be excessive...