Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Frozen vent pipes

Noticed with the cold weather drains running slow, looked at roof lots of frost above my vent pipe. Got on the roof almost froze shut carefully got it free. How does the cold part of the state keep them open? Insulate or?

saw this Frost Free Sewer vent pipe looks like it has sealed air chamber most vent pipes are 4" I think. https://frostfreesewervent.com/#about

The codes used to require a step up in vent size below the roof in certain climatic regions (because of frost). Since most states and counties have adopted the International Code, I can't say for sure if that clause is still there. The International Code is much less strict than the good old Uniform Code.

Some of the vent pipes have a “heat trace” installed. At least that is what I was told by the plant manager at our school.

When it would get down to -30 or so the little kids toilet in my preschool classroom would start gurgling when the toilet was flushed in the bathroom next door.

I figured out that the vent was frosted up enough that the system was venting through our toilet.... Not good!

My fix was to run the faucet on full hot for 30 minutes and to dump several quarts of boiling water down the drain during this half hour. That seemed to get enough heat into the system to defrost the pipe and then everything would work normally for a couple of weeks.

If it had been happening in a house that I owned I think I would have tried to figure out a better way. But, for what it’s worth, hot water down the drain did work.

https://www.menards.com/main/buildi...r-vent/iv2000/p-1541140092847-c-5810.htm

https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=drain+vent+frost+prevention&fr=aaplw&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fassets-ssl.bigdealsmedia.net%2Fimages%2F74029.jpg#id=8&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fassets-ssl.bigdealsmedia.net%2Fimages%2F74029.jpg&action=click

https://video.search.yahoo.com/sear...174178a93c6c6dfa94e3956&action=click

I used to have this problem here when it got severly cold—3 inch vent pipe clogging up with frost—drains running slow. 3 inch ABS thru roof about 1 ft. Dropped a 1-1/2 inch length of ABS down the drain that stopped at the first bend in vent pipe and extended maybe 6 inches above 3 inch vent.
For some reason this took care of the problem—no more frozen vents

Short vent pipes can be a problem, squirrel shoving nuts in them can be even worse. One thing I’ve seen done is a guy placed a 90 degree bend on his vents ... not sure if that was a smart thing.

When I had squirrel issues, I made up some chimney like covers with screens on them so nothing could fall into the pipe.

There's a lot of ways for vents to get clogged and it doesn't necessarily mean frost or cold weather. In fact sewage gasses usually create enough heat to prevent that. could be improper installation or number of vents. I believe code mandates a vent no more than 4' from each drain. I just went through this a few months ago with the kitchen in mid summer and 100+ degree temperatures. Both baths and the laundry worked fine, kitchen sink wouldn't drain at all. No clogs in drain, I pulled trap, and ran a snake down some 50 feet with no sign of anything being stuck. , but sink wouldn't drain. Tried chemical drain cleaners, didn't help at all. Got up on the roof and flushed the vent with a hose. Worked immediately after.

A lot of people don't realize things live in the sewer and non use can also cause a problem.


Phil

You can wrap insulation around the pipe and put a larger diameter pipe over the insulation. Some sort of flange or reducers could be used to seal the top portion or just duct tape for a temporary fix. There is also heater wire tape for waterlines that would work if you can get power to the vent easily. Might only need to do the portion below the roof so no new holes in the roof. Here it doesn't usually get cold enough to worry about but people wrap non LED Christmas lights around pipes and plants they don't want to freeze, could work?

Thinking a southern CA fix does nothing for the steady below zero weather we are having.

Heres a fix supposed to work made a homemade one but mine is already a popsicle! Not from squirrels or debris but weeks of steady below zero!

https://www.acmetools.com/shop/tool...361332&utm_content=GS_sewer%20skewer

https://youtu.be/mSWAqH4hOaA

I'm wondering if this is our issue at the moment. The contractor has finally started our floor/cabinet fix from our house flooding in late September. With everything ripped out of the downstairs bathroom, the wife painted it. Everytime a toilet flushes, it smells to high heaven and the darn hole if plugged.

Probably sucking the water out of the sink trap.

That is what would happen if the vent was totally corked off for sure...

There are some OK videos on YouTube on this topic, pretty easy fixes to avoid it ever happening again...

I got up on my roof and mine are plugged with ice think I have a little flow as they were snow capped above the top of vent, as are most of my neighbor's vents.

I have a sewer pipe that is run close to a parking area; the pipe connects the tank to the field. I was concerned about frost being pushed down because of the vehicle tracks. The excavation company suggests that I lay a 1'x3" piece of closed cell foam over the pipe and then backfill. I had extra foam available so I did all the pipes from the house to tank to the field.

That's a pretty common strategy here, especially when digging to 10' is not desirable (which is pretty much always). The wider you can make your insulation (within reason) the better. Frost will curl around it and get to your pipe given enough time and low temps.

Kurt, I'd run a plug-in heat trace and enough extension cord that I could plug it in whenever it became a problem and thaw the thing out. Climbing up on the roof in the winter time is not high on my list of hobbies.

Yeah, but Kurt lives for pain!

Rule of thumb is that an inch of foam equals a foot of soil.

😉

How about when hiding bodies?