Those of you who live where the mercury doesn’t regularily hang out in the minus 20’s and below, probably never get to experience the joy of a frozen sewer vent, something that happens up here several times over the course of the winter. Sewer systems usually have a vent up on the roof, letting all of the noxious gases escape out of the house, rather than in the washroom or elsewhere. Of course these gases are nice and warm and moist, and when they hit cold winter air they freeze, usually building up over time and eventually capping off the vent. That means that the sewer gas (and remember in our case it is a nice warm sewer tank below the house that is generating the gas) has no where to go and soon the house smells like, well, like a sewer tank.
Normally the solution is to get out a ladder and crawl up on to the roof with a kettle of boiling water and/or something to chip away the ice and open up the vent that way. But our roof is way too dangerous for that method. The sewer vent is probably about 35 feet up, and the roof is slippery metal, pitched at almost 30 degrees (28.41 degrees to be a little more precise).
Our solution is quite elegant actually, (and when I say "our" I mean I nodded enthusiastically when Gary and Dale thought about it). First of all the roof where the vent is located is uninsulated around the pipe. This allows heat from the house to warm the vent stack and keep ice from forming in it. This is only a partial solution as the gas still freezes when it meets the cold air and the ice forms outside the vent, still building up and blocking. The second part of the solution was to bring the stack straight down into a clean out and branching the stack off from there. This clean out is in the attic.
So when the vent freezes over, as it did again today for about the fifth time this winter, I simply go up into attic and take the cap off the clean out (holding a bucket underneath to collect the condensed, er, water). I then use a long stick to punch out the ice from below, opening the vent once more. The technique still needs some refinement, I need to come up with a better "chisel", as frequently I just punch a small hole in the ice, which quickly freezes up again, but all in all it sure beats climbing up onto that roof in -35 degree weather, hoping I’d hit a snowbank on the way down.
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16 responses
It must be quite a relief to have such a manageable solution, given it happens many times over the course of a winter, even if, well, it must not be the most pleasant chore to go punch that whole in the ice and release the gaz./ All stories of home owners in cold climate get me laughing. I remember when we bought our ‘winterized’ camp some 5 years ago to live year round in it. Not so ‘winterized’ it turned out. And one day, the plumber came and told us that, apparentely, for some time now, we had been flushing the toilet, not in the pvc drain pipe (who had blown up because of a deep freeze) but just right below the camp. The poor man, our plumber, had to put gaz heaters under the camp, thaw everything before he could work on anything, hook up a new drain, etc. And the thought that he had to work in such horrible conditions (and I am not referring to the cold but to the mess down there), for our well being, has made him an honor guest in our house forever. / Yes, stories about houses and cold climate always get a chuckle out of me. There are many sagas to be told.
You have all the fun.
That’s happened a couple of times here too, even though we are not at all far north. Luckily, our roof isnt’t too scary to climb up on. Sounds like you’ve got an excellent system in place for dealing with the problem! (-:
Ingenious! We are fortunate in that the man of the house in our neighbouring unit generously does our vent whenever he does his. We love him because he allows our house to smell pretty, not like poo.
Well so far no vent problems, but the poo truck likes to suck our place on super suck mode. Three days a week we come home to a house smelling of poo. The super sucking poo truck sucks all of our traps dry. The poor cats are laying on the floor trying to get away from the smell! The worst was coming home last week to the smell of a moose roast in the crockpot mixed with the smell of poo. Oh the north 🙂
Hi Suzanne,
Yeah cold weather and plumbing just don’t go together. I have a similar story but not sewer just grey water. Our Csts house’s kitchen sink kept freezing and the landlord’s solution was to cut the pipe off and just let it flow out under the house. When his bathroom froze we had to crawl under the house to unthaw it, but we could barely fit because of the mass of frozen water from the kitchen sink. Had it happened another couple of weeks into the winter we’d have never been able to get under there.
I do have all the fun Dave. Does keep life interesting.
Bev, I think it is a moderately common problem anywhere it is cold, although where it is warmer I think some of it depends on the design of the system and the roof. Here you’re pretty much guaranteed to have it happen.
J&I, yeah, if you’re up on the roof you might as well get the neighbour’s stack as well. When we lived in the duplex I would do next doors at the same time. That roof was much less scary, although I do hate metal roofs in the winter.
Ah yes Kara, the dreaded trap suck out. Happens here all the time especially in the kid’s washroom which is right above the tanks. Not too much of a problem for me though as I’m usually home all the time and can catch it pretty quickly.
I think a book on plumbing in cold weather climate would make a huge hit in the comedy department. You get to worship plumbers, well drillers, sceptic services and all the likes. / Hot climate too has its pitfalls. One summer, after three years in a row of a serious drought, our surface well went completely dry. As did the wells of many other housholds, and more dramatically, of some dairy farms in our area. We muled the BIG water jugs for three months. We had to coordinate our potty trips to minimize water use, shower on the deck with a solar shower (the black pouch you leave in the sun), much to the delight of anyone going by on the lake (our improvised shower stall only had three walls and we decided that lake side was the only wall we could do without because of the distance). NONE of it was fun at the time. Hilarious storytelling years afterward. Like you say : keeps like interesting. And mostly, keeps us grateful when everything runs smooth.
Sounds like an interesting shower Suzanne. I’m afraid though that if I used it it would drastically reduce boat traffic on the lake.
I like your solution, but it will not work for me. I have no attic and the junction of the kitchen and bath (basement) vents is in the rafters.
I have a 3″ vent. I’m thinking of putting a coupling onto the top to extend (temporary) the stack a foot. I’m going to engineer a way to drop a short (3 ft is the shortest I’ve yet found) heat tape into the stack. I may suspend a length of thin wall and put the HT inside of it. I think if the TW/HT does not touch the sides of the stack, there’s no danger of fire or damage. I’ll only plug the tape in long enough for the ‘snow cone’ to melt. I’ll run a cord up to the peak of the roof and follow it to the end. I have an outdoor outlet that I could use to plug the tape in when necessasry.
If I could find a shorter tape, all my problems would be solved, but 3 ft is the shortest I’ve found so far.
I’ll romove the xtension/tape/cord in the winter.
I’m not going to make the thing now, I’ll do it next summer when it’s warm. 🙂
Hi Bob,
The only problem with the “heat the pipe” solutions (and there are commercial applications available, including ones that use glycol) is that it doesn’t solve the problem above the pipe. The warm most air is going to freeze up above the pipe. The heat tape will make it easier to clean out though as the pipe should remain unfrozen.
Clare: I can extend the TW/HT abovet the top of the stack a few inches. Do you think that would help evacuate the warm, moist air?
I connect my clothes dryer exhaust to the clean out in the basement. I run one load of clothes through the vent pipe and I’m good until the next cold blast.
That’s a novel solution Don, I’m sort of surprised that it would work, given the amount of moisture that it a load of clothes generate. I’m also not sure it would work here (even if was practical for me, which it isn’t) given the distance between the dryer and my vent stack – most of the heat would dissipate.
I’m racking my brain trying to solve this problem, one good trick, if accesible, is to install a cheater vent in your attic space. They are readily availiable from most plumbing suppliers. Its just a sping loaded valve that will let air into the system when that pesky poop sucking truck tries to suck the toilet down the pipes. This seems to work well but it still doesnt allow your sewer tank to vent its gasses out. I have tried using arctic vents, a heat traced vent pipe that is CSA approved but they just seem to make an even bigger ice cube. Seems like the problem is worsening now that all the new buildings are getting heat traced sewer tanks. I have a good Idea and will be sure to let everyone know once I patent it and hopefully make my millions, I can have pipe dreams cant I?
I live alone on the edge of town and my sewer vent pipe keeps freezing up. I live in Saskatchewan. I can’t afford to keep paying a plumber to come out 3 times a week. Is there anything I can do myself? Some one told me to flush the toilet with buckets of boiling water, will this help?thanks for any help.
Iceni
I’m not sure what to suggest to your Ruth. The traditional methods of solving the problem involve getting up on the roof and either bashing the frozen blockage off, or pouring boiling water down it to melt the obstruction. There are a number of methods people try to prevent the frost build up on vent stacks, but I don’t think any are completely foolproof. We opted for an easy and safe way to get rid of the frost once it formed (bashing it off but from the inside) but it would only work with easy access to an attic space and the installation of a clean out below the vent.