couple notes on heat tapes for condensate pipe

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abwjms
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couple notes on heat tapes for condensate pipe

Post by abwjms »

we came down and found an icicle at the end of our condensate pipe fix tee, inside the garage.

A thermometer revealed that the air temp at the tee pipe end (again, inside the garage) was 32.6F, so just at freeze temp. The tee was still working, but if the garage temp gets much lower, then the icicle will solidify and the tee will eventually stop working. (I don't know enough physics to guess when; the temp inside the garage would seem to need to get enough below freezing for long enough to make a full plug form.)

Anyway, a heat tape run along the condensate pipe may be a solution as was discussed after last year's freezeup.

There are at least two kinds of heat tape for pipe, we found both at Caswell's.

The first kind is for water supply pipes and says explicitly to not use them on pipes that aren't filled with water.

The second kind can be used for empty pipes, and also for roof de-icing. (For those of you who are happy Northeasterners and have had fun with ice dams, it's the kind of heat tape you put on your roof to prevent them.)

Anyway, we got the last of those (Raychem Gardian) from Caswell's and will apply it to the condensate pipe itself inside the garage starting at the base (where the thermostat on is on the tape) where the pipe end exits the house wall and running up the cond pipe for as long as the tape is, as a direct heat source on the pipe. We'll see what that does.

Both Home Depot and Lowe's in Lewes do not carry the second kind, and are out of the first.

Good luck all; we need to pool our ideas like we did last winter and work with the HOA and Legum/Norman to address this problem (speaking just as a fellow resident). It's really sad to see the guts of a unit with a pipe leak being thrown out its windows into a 30-yard dumpster in its driveway. The effect on the unit owner is bad enough; beyond that, what it does to the viability of our community (insurance/insurability, property value) should be of critical concern to all of us.

(footnote: we're also running heaters in the garage to raise the temp substantially, but that's not practical long-term given the large size of the unheated space. It occurs to me whether adding registers in the garage ceiling to the heating ducts running to the back of the unit inside the floor in the first floor is practical, to keep the garage temp up. We've also attached 2" rigid foam board insulation to the inside of the garage door panels with paneling adhesive (Loctite Power Grab).)
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