To go along with the other thread about how to unfreeze your frozen pipes.... I had frozen pipes and now that I've unfrozen the pipes, I need to prevent this from happening again.
My setup:
The utility room is at the back of the house, it's poorly insulated. Slab floor. Water line comes into the house and splits into 2 branches. One goes along the back wall to the washer and utility sink; the other to the hot water heater and main house. (see diagram attached) Pipes are metal, not copper.
The pipes froze behind the sink/washer and around the corner for a bit. Both hot and cold. Those pipes have zero insulation on them, I was able to add some insulation to the rest of the back wall. It's a crowded area - there's a gas line, hot and cold water pipes, an electric conduit, and a drain line from the furnace humidifier all sitting together. The pipes are touching in a lot of places. I can move the drain line around but the rest of it doesn't move.
I can't add insulation to the wall without tearing everything out, and I'm not prepared to do that. So I need to add heating tape to the pipes. Given the spacing of all these pipes, it'll be REALLY hard to wrap each water pipe separately, and depending on how thick this tape is, I may not be able to at all. Can I wrap both pipes as one? Does the gas line or electric conduit object to having heating tape touching it?