Author Topic: Location of water pipes inside house  (Read 1195 times)

slackmax

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1411
Location of water pipes inside house
« on: February 05, 2019, 06:53:34 AM »
I'm asking because I want to know where to apply heat to keep pipes from freezing in winter if I am ever away and want to turn the heat way down.

I live in a townhome with no basement. There is a round water cap (shutoff valve) in the apron of my driveway. I am assuming (correct me if necessary) that there is an underground pipe the goes from this round water cap straight towards the house. If this is the case, the pipe would continue (underground) into my house under the wall between the garage and the foyer on the first floor, where it meets a faucet that is coming out of the wall between garage and foyer.  I also assume the pipe stays underground while it continues about 8 more feet and pops up out of the cement floor next to the water heater, and branches into various copper pipes going all over the place. 

My question is about the piping in the wall between the foyer and the garage.  Is the piping all underground except for the part that pops up for the faucet?  (The other possibility is that the piping pops up as soon as it gets within the house, and runs horizontally through the wall to the faucet, above ground.)  The pipe for the faucet is inside the wall, and I can't see through the wall, of course, to see if the pipe goes under ground there.

Thanks for reading this long post! (If you did)       

Papa bear

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1838
  • Location: Ohio
Re: Location of water pipes inside house
« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2019, 07:14:19 AM »
Realistically the only way to know is to look at it.  Either with a hole and an endoscope (like 40$ on Amazon) or cut out enough drywall to see with your eyes.

There are more issues with keeping your heat way down in the winter than just pipes though...

Acrylic tubs/shower surrounds like the twos above 50, flooring with contract or crack, etc

Best to just keep the tstat at 55, put on a WiFi tstat to periodically check for problems, and have a trusted neighbor help out with calling hvac repair if needed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

lthenderson

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2252
Re: Location of water pipes inside house
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2019, 11:08:12 AM »
I doubt that the waterline for the outdoor faucet is coming from an underground branch that is between the shutoff in the driveway and where it comes out of the concrete near the water heater. In every house I have worked on, the outdoor faucets are teed into the nearest house line after the water has entered the house. There are several reasons for this. This allows you to shut off all the water to the entire house from inside the house and presumably, you have such a shutoff near the waterheater. You only have one line that needs to be buried below the frostline instead of multiple lines. It is also easier to change or fix a line that isn't buried in concrete.

If I had to guess, if you looked around, you would find the line to the outdoor faucet is branching from another line after your main line comes up by the water heater. But like the previous person said, without opening up walls or using scopes, it is hard to find out.

I also agree with the other person that I would not turn the heat in my house to below 50 degrees. Really cold followed by temperate warm temperatures are very hard on everything from drywall to plastics to tile. This is why an abandoned house can literally fall apart within years of having no conditioning when it has previously stood decades with little problems.

HipGnosis

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1824
Re: Location of water pipes inside house
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2019, 01:39:39 PM »
townhome means different things in different locations.
Please explain your situation.

slackmax

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1411
Re: Location of water pipes inside house
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2019, 07:21:23 AM »
Thanks for taking the time to reply, everyone. At this point, I don't plan to cut holes in anything, to find out where the pipes are. I'll just spend a few bucks whenever the outside temp drops below freezing too much for too long, and put a few electric heaters near the spots I'm worried about, which are on the lower level and not directly heated by the hvac. And I'll keep the rest of the house at 50 degrees or higher.

mavendrill

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 90
  • Location: Northern Colorado
Re: Location of water pipes inside house
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2019, 05:24:07 PM »
Also worth noting that some buildings (mountain vacations) are built with the expectation they will undergo severe cold.  If your area makes this likely, I'd get a professional to evaluate it ( a hundred bucks today to save a winter of heat potentially - but if it's not built as a vacation him be the chances are almost zero). 

Similarly, if you keep your house long term, you can start making it friendlier to very cold temperatures to facilitate your desires