Quote:
Originally Posted by ossipeeboater
I had an issue with my heat going out this past winter, ended up blowing out several lines because my faucets were not open to give the water places to expand so after you shut off the pump if your not going to gravity drain all the pipes I'd open all the faucets in the house and put the red antifreeze in the traps and toilet so that if you do have a freeze it doesn't burst anything.
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Just having your faucets open will not prevent your pipes from bursting. Opening the faucet will allow for the water drain all the way back to the drain opening. Water when frozen expands in all directions not just along its length (in a pipe), it will also expand in its circumfrence, this is what will cause your pipes to burst. To illustrate this, imagine not putting anti-freeze in your trap, one side of the trap is always exposed to unrestricted air, the other to a vented plumbing network (still unrestricted air) that trap will still burst in this event as the surface of the trap water freezes it will expand in its circumfrence and burst the trap.
The second cause for a burst pipe is pressure build-up from a ice plug. You turn the water system on, the system pressurizes and blows out a fitting or a hydronic baseboard pipe (1/2 the thickness of supply pipe). This plug is caused by a holding spot for water or a point in which cold blasts of air have direct access to the water pipe hot or cold (my example in above post). You can leave your faucet open if you want to but the physics of water expansion say that you are not gaining the benefit you desire.
The reason that your pipes burst is because you have a holding spot for water that cannot exit the system, this probably occured in either a long run of pipe attached to floor framing or at a joint connection. This is almost impossible to prevent with copper or PVC piping. PEX is incredibly resistent to bursting, the connections and manifold are not.