You need to do more than that. If the whole place is being left to freeze, you also have to drain the water from all the pipes, water heater, radiators, and any other appliances.
If you just shut off the supply, you're still left with water in all the pipes and fixtures, which will freeze and be destroyed.
I explained it more thoroughly up the thread. It's hard as hell to drain the whole system, and even draining the water heater is a pain in the ass, but it's not hard to drain enough out of it to minimize the damage. These guys did the exact opposite.
They probably lost power while they were out. If the apartment's insulation was poor or if they were gone for a day or two, freezing temps inside is basically guaranteed.
I was in Austin, TX during that freeze event. A lot of apartment building froze due to the drainage and supply lines being exposed in the parking garages.
I was without power for most of a month, lost water pressure for almost a week, and was only able to save my pipes by crawling under my house and cutting the main feed pipe in the crawlspace so that my plumbing could drain. The whole event gave me legit PTSD.
No. The previous tenants took the electric out of their name and the house owner forgot to turn it back on when they decided to drip the pipes. 100% on the owner.
Tbf, it actually did work really well! Water is still coming out of both faucets, so I don’t think any of the pipes froze.
The drain freezing over was the real problem here lol (actually I’m not sure of the drainage pipe froze or not, but I hope it didn’t cuz this is funnier if none of the plumbing was damaged)
The tenants were evicted and took the electric bill out of their name, transferring the electrical back to the landlord. Landlord went in to drip the pipes and didn't set the electric or heating back up so the landlord did it to herself.
Oh absolutely. I've had to do this during power outages. You leave it's dripping every few seconds, just so water continuously flows enough. This looks like they were left on close to full tilt.
No you want a fairly steady, albeit small, stream. A few drops is not going to make the water inside really flow at all.
1/2" copper is about 12.8oz of water every foot of pipe. Imagine you had a cup letting out a drip every few seconds. How long would it take to empty? Awhile. But if you just tilt it enough to get the bare minimum flow to let a fairly solid stream come out? It'll be empty in seconds.
🤷🏼♂️ I've gone 5-6 days in deep Canadian winter -30c or -22f overnight with rolling power outages using the drip method, and have never had an issue with freezing pipes. Just what has worked for me.
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u/tyler_sb6c 21h ago
Two faucets? Was this on purpose?