Low temp warning while on winter vacation

[pb4uski]

Yes, that deeper freeze can happen when one gets a cold winter with less snow cover... snow on the ground is a natural insulation from frigid air temperatures. We have that in Vermont every once in a while...lack of insulating snow cover and abnormally frigid temps cause the frost to go deeper into the ground than normal... and raise havoc with underground pipes that are not far enough below the frost line.

 

[Music Lover]

Yes, that's the way it works here in northern Michigan in MOST winters also. But every now and then we have an extremely cold winter where the frost line goes below the depth where the pipes and footings are buried. This exact situation last occurred during the winter of 2013/14, when the frost line went down to 6-7 feet (or even deeper) in places by late in the winter (a couple feet below the code depth for water pipes), causing all sorts of problems for a lot of people.

We had a similar winter recently (maybe 2013/14 too) where water lines from the city main to houses that were 8 feet or deeper below the ground froze...a combination of bitter cold and very little snow cover. Hundreds of people had no water.

 

[Music Lover]

pb4uski is correct. Until you get up into the Arctic, where there's permafrost, there is a "frost line" below which the ground doesn't ever freeze. Local codes require things like underground water pipes and footings to be below this line. Around here the line is around 3 feet, so the codes require 4-foot depths for footings.

Without heat, the basement quickly becomes the warmest room in the house. The water pipes entering the basement from the street won't freeze, even in a vacant, unheated house. Only if the house is removed and the cellar hole open to the elements will it become a problem.

Our city has had frozen water pipes 8 feet below ground...that's lower than most basement slabs. In those situations, an unheated house for several weeks will freeze below the basement slab.

 

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things I do


- freedompop pay as you go cell data to run sensors so expensive internet suspended when not there

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Can you tell me more about this setup? Specifically, do you have a device in hotspot mode? I would like to investigate this for some property I have w/an outbuilding. I would like to set up a battery + solar plus motion detection system to alert me if anyone (or anything) is moving around the building.