beakster505 asked:
My house was built 3 years ago with radiant floor heating in my basement which is living quarters. In the event of a power outage during a winter storm, my heating system would not run. What I need is ball park figure of the time that it would take to start freezing the water lines that are constructed within the cement slab floor. A brief outage obviously would be no problem. Lets say that at 10 F. the ice covered electric lines took 12 hours to get up and running. Probably, still cool. But at what length of time should I seriously consider going into debt for a generator? I’d rather buy a new genny than replace a radiant heating system. Or some Kerosone heaters to put on basement floor? We can survive without electric and provide some heat for the house for a few days but what would the danger be the the floor pipes freezing up because the water is not flowing. I have two non-electric heating devices for a 44×28 house, furnished basement & main floor. How prepared do I need to be?
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My house was built 3 years ago with radiant floor heating in my basement which is living quarters. In the event of a power outage during a winter storm, my heating system would not run. What I need is ball park figure of the time that it would take to start freezing the water lines that are constructed within the cement slab floor. A brief outage obviously would be no problem. Lets say that at 10 F. the ice covered electric lines took 12 hours to get up and running. Probably, still cool. But at what length of time should I seriously consider going into debt for a generator? I’d rather buy a new genny than replace a radiant heating system. Or some Kerosone heaters to put on basement floor? We can survive without electric and provide some heat for the house for a few days but what would the danger be the the floor pipes freezing up because the water is not flowing. I have two non-electric heating devices for a 44×28 house, furnished basement & main floor. How prepared do I need to be?
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3 Responses to “I have radiant floor heating. Without power, will my pipes freeze in the basement with no heat available?”
Hopefully the fluid in your radiant system is a mixture that won’t freeze until it gets to -30 F in the ground. That is not likely to happen, but you need to make sure you have antifreeze in your system and not just plain water.
Here in MI the temp has been 0F–10F. This is normal for us. Even at these temps. Pipes inside the home will not freeze for 5 days or more. If you have an extended time without heat, a kerosene heater run a couple hours per day will prevent temps inside the house from freezing. I don’t know about floor heating pipes but I don’t think they would freeze any sooner than water pipes.
I WOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT ANY THING. YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER YOUR PEX LINES ARE INCASED IN CONCRETE THEY MAY GET A LITTLE COLD BUT I DOUBT THEY WILL FREEZE. AND IF THEY DO THE WONT BREAK.THERE IS NO PLACE FOR THEM TO EXPAND TO.