[tournier]

Every three or four weeks the gas regulator for my furnace/hot water heater freezes and cuts off the gas supply. The gas company is excellent about dispatching a truck -- they drain the both the condensate leg under the regulator and the drip leg on the supply and usually push in a couple of quarts of methyl alcohol. That holds me for a couple of weeks.

More information: we are on "well head" gas which, I am told, is commonly wet; there is no realistic possibility of using heating tape as there is no access to electricity where the regulator is sited; I can "fix" the problem by pouring a couple of gallons of warm water over the regulator so I am sure that the problem is a freezing regulator.

Question: is there ANYTHING I can do to minimize the problem?

[labman]

It would be fairly easy to build a vertical section of pipe with a drain at the bottom, even a drip leg, or a compressed air water separator. I am not thinking of a way to keep the water from freezing. You can't let it freeze and burst the pipe.

[tournier]

Labman --

Thanks for your prompt reply. There is a drip leg beneath what I presume is the secondary regulator (the big round one rather than the one that, to my eye, looks like a regulator) and another drain coming out of what I presume is a water separator of some sort. Both lines have what appear to be ball valves (the have "lever" handles).

Questions: will blowing those lines remove much of the accumulated water? How often would you think I should blow them? We live, by the way, in eastern Kentucky where the temperature rarely falls below the high single digits.

Bob

[NorthernHeat]

All I can say is " Can't the gas company come up with a solution" after all they are usually resposible for the delivery just past the meter

[labman]

I should have paid more attention to some of the stuff when I was growing up in western Pennsylvania. Did a lot of running in the woods with gas fields. Being a kid, I kind of nibbed around the equipment. They must have had something. The gas and water vapor are going to come out of the well warm, but the water will condense when it hits the cold pipe above ground.

Yes blowing the lines should help, maybe before every freeze. Perhaps following every anointment of hot water.