Living in a mobile home may seem to be romantic and exciting – until winter comes and you have to face all sorts of home maintenance nuances that you could not even think about before! This is why for most people living a life in a trailer is more of a temporary adventure rather than a constant way of life.
However, if a mobile home is your all-year-round living space, it will be good to know how to deal with such a common problem as frozen pipes. How to unfreeze pipes in a trailer? We can give you a couple of easy yet useful ideas and guides regarding this issue.
How to Easy Unfreeze Pipes In a Mobile Home
There are several ways of unfreezing your trailer’s pipes in winter. Hanging upon how badly your plumbing system is frosted, decide yourself which of the offered methods will work best for you.
- Use salt for thawing the pipes
- Apply a heat gun
- Go for a common hairdryer!
- Make use of a space heater
- Wet towels can also be helpful
Now let us explain how each of these methods will work on your frozen poor pipes.
So if you spotted a frozen pipe (or pipes) in your mobile home, don’t rush calling the maintenance team at once! It is still possible that you can handle the situation yourself.
1.Use salt for thawing the pipes
First of all, try to use salt for thawing the frozen pipes in your mobile home. How can salt help, you may wonder? Well, it is all about physics in fact. You see, salt is able to lower the freezing point of ice and thus salt can defrost your pipes way more effectively even in comparison to more “aggressive” ways, such as heating.
All you need to do for this is to pour some salt down the sink and wait until it works. In some situations, this approach will be even safer and more preferable than using a heater!
If you don’t have time (or simply don’t want) to wait for salt to do its job in your pipes, we can suggest another option to you. For this one, you will need a heat gun. Heat guns like those that are used in major construction projects will be just perfect for what you want to do. To make use of this tool properly, we recommend you keep the heat at the level of 125 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
2.Apply a heat gun
We guess you have already understood how it should work. You simply point the heat gun at the frozen pipe and wait until it starts defrosting. Only make sure you are not using too high heat settings, otherwise, your pipe will most likely explode!
3.Common hairdryer
As an alternative and somewhat less powerful option, why not try out your common hair dryer to cope with frozen pipes in a mobile home? You might be surprised, but this device can do miracles to the frosted water pipes! And besides, this approach has three big benefits that are worth being mentioned.
First of all, everyone has a hair dryer, right? It means that you will not have to buy any additional tools or products to deal with the frozen pipes. So, like this, you save money and time. The second benefit is that hair dryers are extremely gentle on pipes. And that is super important since we must act carefully and delicately when unfreezing them.
If we apply too much heat, our plumbing system can collapse! Finally, every hairdryer has such an option as temperature adjustment. With that one, you will be able to effortlessly control the level of heat applied to the pipe which means it is almost impossible to mess up with it.
4.Make use of a space heater
Nevertheless, in some cases, using a hair dryer or salt may be useless. For instance, if you happen to have a hole in a skirt that caused the freezing, or you have a frozen water heater room, neither heat gun nor salt will help you out. Instead, the best you can do is to make use of a battery-operated space heater. When you heat the area with it, it will be easier to figure out whether it will be possible to thaw everything out at all.
The only thing you must always keep in mind when working with a space heater is that this device is a fire hazard so keep an eye on it while it is working!
5.Wet towels
Finally, there is one more approach that may help thawing frozen pipes under your mobile home. It may sound crazy but you will need to use…wet warm towels! No idea where you can get those if your pipes are frozen, but those who have already used this remedy assure that it works. What shall you do with those towels?
Well, simply wrap your frozen pipe (or pipes) with them and wait until they defrost.
However, make sure that the towels are warm to the touch when they are wrapped around the pipes (that is very important!). And also, you will have to replace the towels every ten minutes, so this method will probably not suit those who lack patience or time.
But in general, these are the basic ways of defrosting your pipes that got too cold in winter under your mobile home!
How to Find Frozen Pipes In a Trailer
Frozen pipes are not a funny thing at all. This is why spotting them early enough is so crucial for your further actions. In most cases, you can spot a frozen pipe either visually or physically.
When doing that visually, you need to search for any signs of pipe discoloration or frost on it. A pipe that is functioning properly will normally have no icy or frosted buildup on its surface. It will also be uniform in color.
How to physically define which pipe is frozen? Well, touch it! If it feels icy and/or sounds “thick” when you tap it with a wrench, then this is your girl to fix.
How to Diagnose Frozen Pipes
To avoid all those tiring pipe-fixing procedures, you need to know what actually makes water freeze in your pipes. With that in mind, we have created a short but informative guide on how to diagnose the frozen pipes easily.
- Turn on a water line to see if water is running anywhere. If it is, then you do have a frozen pipe in the mix somewhere. In case no water is running, then it means that the problem is with your main water line which is frozen. No matter what the cause is, if you turn the pipes on, it will relieve pressure and make ice moving easier the second the pipes are thawed.
- Crank the heat up! It may sound crazy but it does work and helps to thaw the pipes out. In addition, this method has a very useful “side effect”: it helps to prevent your pipes from repeatedly freezing.
- If you spotted a frozen pipe, look for holes in a trailer’s skirt or underbelly. Why? Because if cold air leaked in, it could lead to pipe freezing. And if you do find holes, you will have to patch them up. Like that, you will be sure that the pipes will remain defrosted after you fix them.
- In case your main water line is frozen, you will have to check the heat tape. If the tape is not warmed properly, then make sure it is plugged in. If it so happens that it is not able to function properly, replace it. Once everything is fine with the heat tape, the pipes will also be safe and sound since it is the tape that keeps the main water line warm and prevents it from freezing.
- What if the tape is fine but the main water line is still frozen? Then the problem may nest in your heater room. Sometimes, as a result of a draft, heater rooms become a source of pipe freezing.
How to Keep Pipes From Freezing Under Mobile Home
Even though you know a step-by-step instruction of how to fix frozen pipes, preventing a problem is always better than dealing with it. When it comes to defrosting icy pipes, there is literally not that much you can do to prevent it from happening.
Before we tell you how to prevent water pipes from freezing in a mobile home, learn one simple thing: you need to make sure that heat is being kept around the places where the water is flowing.
This is why it is so important to winterize your mobile home.
So how do you avoid that pipe-freezing hazard? Simply by doing the following:
- Double-check that your skirt and water heating room are both free from any drafts. Proper insulation is a must, but no holes, no extra bits! The goal is to stop the cold air from getting to the plumbing system.
- Maintain your plumbing regularly. If you need to add a new heat tape, do it. Pipes that are improperly or poorly maintained are more prone to all sorts of breakage including freezing, by the way!
- Always have a backup plan in case any unexpected things happen. If, for instance, you face a winter storm, then no skirt or insulation will protect your pipes. For such cases, always have a plan of actions ready in advance.
- The heat that your HVAC system produces can be used as a heat source for the pipes, too. Crank the heat up upstairs, and your pipes will stay in a water-ready state much easier.
- Insulate the problem pipes. If you know that particular pipe or pipes tend to freeze in winter, take care of them beforehand by wrapping insulation around to keep them warm. Use fiberglass, foam, or any other approved material you can find.
So now that you are properly informed about the things that may cause your mobile home pipes to freeze, dealing with this issue will definitely be easier for you! Be sure that you follow all the suggestions we gave you here. Insulate your pipes, check their state regularly, fix if necessary, and of course, keep them properly warmed in winter.
Like this, you will make sure your plumbing system is operating as it should be, and nothing threatens your pipes. But even then, don’t forget to give them a regular check for any leakages or other malfunctions.
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