Frozen Jobbies

[Homesafe]

Bit "out of the box" here,

How about temporarliy hook the toliet fill valve up to the hot water supply and flushing from above.

Rico

good That might just work rico.

did you think that up whilst sat on the toolit???

 

[Rico99]

Nah,

Sat biting nails watching text updates for the cricket

Rico

 

[Homesafe]

aahhh don't even mention cricket, it's all the same again.

 

[ColJack]

Bit "out of the box" here,

How about temporarliy hook the toliet fill valve up to the hot water supply and flushing from above.

Rico

because it's already overflowing from the bowl?

bottle of propane and a torch is the way to go.. aim at ground level..

doesn't salt water + cast iron = rust?

 

[Rico99]

Col,

He could empty the pan first, then tip hot water from a bucket down first to lower the level a bit.

Rico

 

[RigidRaider]

How about eating a good hot vindaloo then flushing that down?

 

[JohnD]

I was thinking about this earlier, and it seems to me that a good solution is not to try to melt the ice by pouring hot water in from the top (until you heat the entire ice plug, the water you add will just stay blocked, and will cool and add to the ice plug). What you want to do is to melt it from below.

So I was thinking, if you can get access from underneath the blockage, for example by poking up from an inspection chamber, maybe you could put a steam generator hose (e.g. from a wallpaper stripper) to blow up into the pipe. The heat would hopefully melt the ice plug starting at the bottom, and the condensate and melted ice could drip down and run away.

otherwise, you can get electrical Trace Heating Wire that is wrapped round pipes to prevent freezing. I should think they would take a long time to warm up a frozen pipe full of ice, though.

Or have you fixed it already?

 

[dextrous]

So I was thinking, if you can get access from underneath the blockage, for example by poking up from an inspection chamber, maybe you could put a steam generator hose (e.g. from a wallpaper stripper) to blow up into the pipe. The heat would hopefully melt the ice plug starting at the bottom, and the condensate and melted ice could drip down and run away.

Now that is clever, especially since any steam going up through any uneccessary pipework would eventually meet a trap somewhere and not enter the house. Cunning plan

 

[Whitespirit66]

Bit "out of the box" here,

How about temporarliy hook the toliet fill valve up to the hot water supply and flushing from above.

Rico

MMMMMM. Boil in the 'bog' jobbies!

 

[dextrous]

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

 

[C12awa]

Cheers for the suggestions guys, and laughs. Went back today and set up 3 electric fan heaters at the base of the stack and just let it do its stuff. 2 Hours later and im fixing the leaking WC Inlet and i hear a gurgling, open the toilet lid and sure enough. It worked magically.

Spoke to my dad today (Boss aswel) and he said that he used to just start a fire at the bottom of the stack when he ever came across that.... so was looking forward to starting a wee fire, ha ha. What is it with guys making fires. But no luck, was quite disappointed. Lol.

Cheers again guys, worst winter i've seen since starting in the plumbing so still trying to figure stuff out.


Alan

 

[dextrous]

Only trouble with a fire is melting the paint!

 

[ColJack]

suggest some trace heating inside the pipe just in case...

 

[dextrous]

suggest some trace heating inside the pipe just in case...

Wouldn't this potentially, er, snag things and create problems

 

[ColJack]

no, it would be inline with the flow...