Water coming out of tap has frozen

lilian1977

Hi

We picked up the keys for our new house today, and went to the taps first to check them. They are frozen, which we expected. However, the weird thing is, one of the taps appears to have been turned on and then frozen - if you can picture it, it looks like a half full sink being filled up, and then time has stopped! The sink is half full but frozen, and the tap has a column of ice coming out of it.

Any suggestions of how this might have happened, or what we can do? We're not moving in until 30th Jan, we'll be there on and off but not enough to know whether if the taps suddenly defrost, the sink won't overflow.

Help!

jrrowleyws

That must look quite a picture! If that tap has a service valve on the pipe then you could gently warm it with a hair drier until you can turn it so you can switch off the supply to that tap.

Likelyhood is that if it defrosts the tap will do so first as the ice will be thinner than half a sink full so you may get a flood. Saying that, im surprised that a fully flowing tap would freeze so maybe its not switched on too much?

ormus

make sure the main stop tap is off, or better still, the street stop tap is off.
then if it does thaw out whilst youre not there, the damage will be minimised.
open all the taps too.

Peckedhen

Probably a dripping tap and frozen outlet pipe.

lilian1977

I thought it was a dripping tap at first but I don't know why that would cause a half full sink - unless the sink is blocked and it was building up?

Not sure we can get to the stoptap because it's under about 6 inches of virgin snow! Will try though.

jrrowleyws

lilian1977 wrote: »

I thought it was a dripping tap at first but I don't know why that would cause a half full sink - unless the sink is blocked and it was building up?

Not sure we can get to the stoptap because it's under about 6 inches of virgin snow! Will try though.

Is there a working stop c0ck inside? On the off chance that it may not be frozen it could save hunting for the outside one!

mikey72

It's probably been dripping, froze in the waste pipe, them slowly froze back up the pipe, into the sink, then up to the tap.

A slow motion version of the end scene in "Demolition Man"

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Switch it off at the main point in the street.

Keep flushing the toilets & run the hot & cold in the bath & downstairs with the plugs out until the cistrern & tank are drained & leave everything alone until it defrosts.

wobbley

lilian1977 wrote: »

Not sure we can get to the stoptap because it's under about 6 inches of virgin snow! Will try though.

OMG ! Is there anything Richard Branson doesn't control?

27col

lilian1977 wrote: »

I thought it was a dripping tap at first but I don't know why that would cause a half full sink - unless the sink is blocked and it was building up?

Not sure we can get to the stoptap because it's under about 6 inches of virgin snow! Will try though.

6 inches of snow is hardly the artic. It should be easy enough to scrape it clear and turn the stopcock off. Provided of course that you know the approximate position of the stopcock.