[Greg Metz]

I have a frozen gravity fed waterline. It is about 18" underground, 1-1/2" black plastic connected to 1/2" copper under the cabin. Both the plastic and copper lines are now frozen. Can I use an electrical current attached to the copper pipe to try and thaw the lines. If so, what is the best electrical current to use. Any concerns about blowing electrical circuits in the cabin? Thank You, Greg

[massplumber2008]

Hi Greg...

The plastic line won't carry the current so most likely that an elctrical fix won't work here.

First, you want to warm the underneath of the cabin using a space heater (or similar tool) if possible... could just be frozen above ground and perhaps frozen just a little underground. Be sure to have a faucet fully open while doing this work. If you don't have an open line you could unfreeze the pipe only to find it refreezes quickly. Keep a faucet open at all times!

If that fails to produce results, then in my experience, as awful as it sounds,you will need to disconnect the plastic from the copper and then take a very small tube (available at home depot or lowes) and stick it into the black plastic pipe and hook that to a hot water source and start to push the tubing into the pipe and slowly thaw out the pipe.

You may need to hook up to a neighbor's hot water heater with lengths of hose. If possible, you can connect a hose from the neighbor's house to your outside faucet (you would need a double ended washing machine hose to connect the hose to the outside faucet) and that will restore full watewr to your entire house while you do this. Then you would just need to connect the TUBING to your water heater using appropriate adapters to adapt between the water heater drain connection and the tubing.

Anyway, that is a very tedious way to fix this stuation, but with patience, even in the worst cases, I have seen this work very well.

Let us know if you have questions...

MARK