Welding Tips and Tricks

Ok......you can use a welder to thaw frozen pipes. What size machine so you need? AC or DC? What is the proper hookup and machine start sequence?

Not recommend! Start at low amps. Clamp the stinger at one end and the ground at another. Very likely you will be sacrificing your machine!

When I was working in zimbabwe the locals would jam the rod into the workbench until glowing red - cigarette lighter


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Lincoln(and I think others, too) used to have a publication on thawing pies and I understand they included instructions for pipe thawing in the manuals for appropriate welders but it seems that they have since stopped recommending it for various reasons. A heat tape or a couple of heat lamps would be safer....


Lance

The small Lincoln 225 amp AC machines use to have a circle around the 75 amp setting.
It was good for 1 hour continuous pipe thawing duty before a cool down period.
That isn't listed anymore as I recall.

The Lincoln book that described thawing with an engine drive said to leave the fine control setting on 0 (from my fuzzy memory anyway).

I'll try to find the reference book today sometime.

The sa250 that I have had its main armature removed to replace the one in a diesel model. They cooked the armature by running too many amps while pipe thawing.
The guy told me they got impatient and cranked it up.

The easy answer is don't do it. Near any welder will work on galvanized pipe. It takes a MONSTER welder to thaw copper.
Great care is needed to avoid putting current on your electrical system.
The community where I live had until 1996 a village system of galvanized steel. I thawed numerous frozen underground drop lines with a Twentieth Century 295 amp AC only plug in welder advertised as 100% duty cycle.

The process involves unhooking all possible ties with building grounding, and water pipe. Connect a welder lead to each end of a frozen pipe. Start at low power, it doesn't need much. Resistance in the pipe will convert voltage to heat. Only a tiny bit of ice must be thawed, a seep of water will flow water from the supply a bit warmer than frozen, this will thaw the rest.

It is a process full of fire hazard.

Better, if you can open the house end, use a bucket of warm water and a long piece of small stiff PEX tubing. Start a siphone, and uncoil the PEX gently pushing it into the pipe. I've done as much as 100 feet using this method. I've found that drop lines typically only freeze at the street where plowing, and road salt expose the possibly shallow (low bid contractors) tap line to deeper frost. Like a home ice cream freezer, salt causes the un salty water inside the pipe to surrender heat and freeze.

Willie

Bill Beauregard wrote: Better, if you can open the house end, use a bucket of warm water and a long piece of small stiff PEX tubing. Start a siphone, and uncoil the PEX gently pushing it into the pipe. I've done as much as 100 feet using this method. I've found that drop lines typically only freeze at the street where plowing, and road salt expose the possibly shallow (low bid contractors) tap line to deeper frost. Like a home ice cream freezer, salt causes the un salty water inside the pipe to surrender heat and freeze.

Willie

I did similar at my place several years ago, but from the pump house end.

My line froze underground. I unhooked the pipe and stuffed a clear tube into the line until it hit the ice blockage.

Then I kept pouring hot water into the tube - the water exited the bottom of the tube and I was able to keep working the tube deeper until it went through.

If it happened again I'd go through the basement level as you described.

A local well drilling company has a fancy pressure pot to push warm water. I found it works as well to siphon from first floor to cellar. Usually there is a neighbor willing to loan a bucket or two of warm water.