Question for "Blow Out the Water Line" gurus

myredracer wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:

I generally avoid these threads because it is a lot like Ford/Chevy/Ram debates.. But your comments do need a rebuttal.

I live in North West PA, not far from the "Snow Belt" in PA (for those who don't have a clue the snow belt is referring to I80)..

All good points in your post.

We live on a farm on well water and have 5 or 6 faucets around the property which have 1" poly pipe poking up out of the ground about 2' with a plastic Philmac coupling and ordinary metal faucet. In the 10 years or so since it's been installed with sustained temps. down to as low as around 10-15F (and fully exposed to our almost non-stop winter winds), never once has a pipe, fitting or faucet been damaged from freezing despite the lines being fully charged.

We've even had about a 50' run of PEX (along with brass fittings and crimp rings) in an unheated portion of our attached garage for maybe 8 years, also fully charged with water all winter, and that has never been damaged from freezing either.

I was told by a water works engineer once that it's the dissolved air in water that results in damage to piping systems. I did some googling once though and could not find anything to substantiate that. I would think our well water has a low amount of dissolved air or maybe none, and perhaps that is why we don't have a freezing problem.

Dissolved air in the water isn't the problem, air compresses, liquids don't.

Depending on your water actual MINERAL content your water may need a bit more than 32F to freeze.. Well water tends to have a high mineral content, and if you are using a softener system which uses salt for regenerating there can be a trace amount of salt in your water which can affect the freezing point a bit..

From what I understand PURE water freezes at 32F at ONE "atmosphere" of pressure.. Change the pressure a bit and the freeze point will also change a bit..

Water is the only known substance that has three states within human livable temps.. Liquid, gas, solid.

Water also has a rather large expansion ratio when it goes from liquid to gas or liquid to solid.. It is the expansion ratio which causes things to break.

If you give enough air space (air compresses) for the ice to expand nothing will get broken.

Folks seem to think the pink stuff prevents freezing, it doesn't. What it is doing is REPLACING one substance that has a high expansion rate (water) with another substance which has a very low expansion rate (antifreeze).. The pink stuff can an will freeze at low enough temps but it has a very little amount of expansion.. At 32F it can start to slush.

You can test that theory out by using the same test I mentioned with water bottles in your freezer..

Something else that many folks don't realize, water does not always freeze HARD at 32F.. You can get water to stay liquid at 32F if you don't bump it.. If you bump it at 32F it will start forming ice crystals quickly.. Its called SUPERCOOLING.

HERE is a website that gives you step by step info on how to do this experiment..

Lots of science there if you are curious enough to dig around..

HERE is a website which mentions a few of the points I brought up..

On edit.. I would like to note that I am not against using pink stuff, if it makes you feel good and are not comfortable using air only then by all means continue on with what works for you..

Air only works for me and I don't have to deal with clearing the aftertaste of RV antifreeze from the lines..