How do I unfreeze my basement water pipes?

Answer 1

you can buy a special thing for wrapping pipes in at Wal-mart or you can put towels in the dryer and get them hot and wrap them around the pipes... the wrap you buy at walmart costs alot more, but, it takes less time for it to thaw....you can also plug in a heat and close off the basement and that will help too. The stuff at Walmart has wires running through the wrap and you have to be able to plug it in.... it should be in the harware dept, Ace or Lowes may have it also, I'mm sorry I don't know the name of it, but, it does work.

Answer 2

right now, there isn't a lot you can do except try to thaw the pipes you can find with a hair dryer. In the future there are several things you can do.
1. Insulate. They make a wrap just for this purpose and you can get it at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, or Lowe's or any big box type store.
2. Let the water drip. If the temp is going to drop below freezing, it is a good idea to turn your faucets on so they run very little. If you want to conserve, put a bucket under each tap and use the water for flushing the toilet or washing dishes or doing laundry.
3. If you open a faucet and there is no water, close the faucet. Otherwise water will start running when the pipes thaw, possibly flooding the house if left unnoticed

Answer 3

The electric heat tape will work or try to use space heaters to warm the pipes. a hair dryer might work if the pipes are not very frozen. Whatever you do don't use a torch hundreds of fires are started each year by people defrosting pipes with torches.

Answer 4

You can buy heater tape (ask your hardware store sales person to show you where in the store to buy it) wrap it around the pipes and plug in during cold weather.

To unfreeze them NOW, use a hair dryer.

Answer 5

Your basement must be very cold? I would try a hair dryer. Since you can't know exactly where it's frozen you need to just go along the pipe.

Answer 6

heat the basement. That means board up all the cracks to the outside(otherwise you are heating outside too).
Or, if you got wood available to you and tools ...box in the pipes(coffin like with a foot around it and heat the inside of the box once it is all enclosed (need less heat initially) and later once the pipes thaw, you got to put heat tape down each one of them and plug them in continuously while it is this cold(below freezing) And insulation can be put inside those coffins AFTER the lines have thawed(OTHERWISE THEY ARE INSULATED FROM GETTING WARMED) Insulation doesn't supply heat, it just slows up the transfer process(hot to cold or vice versa)
Look at waiting for a day or two of constant heating too. before water flows.

Answer 7

warm them up slowly so that they don't burst. I owuld be prepared for that possibility. I am not sure how to do that though.

In the future to prevent it, you need to keep the water moving in your pipes. You can this by turning all the faucets on to a real slow drip. It might be a little irritating to have the faucets always dripping, but it will keep the water moving and prevent freezing.

Answer 8

You need to warm them up.......duh.

Try a space heater. If you know exactly where the water is frozen use a hair dryer.

Do not use a torch.

Answer 9

Hair dryer

Answer 10

hair dryer, then wrap some insulation around them. when pipes freeze they can break.....not good. expensive, too....