Any plumbers out there? Frozen pipes question...

i'm not a plumber, but it sounds like getting the whole she-bang re-done is the way to go.

how old's the house?

are the water pipes copper, pvc, cast iron? makes a different.

General....I am not a plumber either, but my ex worked as a claims adjuster for an insurance company for many, many years and I picked up a bit of the claims process by osmosis I guess.

IF the insurance company is will to cover the cost of full replacement, then by all means go that route. You have nothing to lose. They may balk a bit if they have thus far only suggested that the leaks need to be repaired. But after explaining the situation to them...the entire house freezing, that you feel it would be best and least costly in the long run for them to approve the full replacement, they might agree or at least meet you halfway on that. If they absolutely refuse, you always have the option of taking it to the claims supervisor. By saying you came to them in good faith that everything would be restored back to its original state before the freeze and that by them refusing to do so makes you feel that they are acting in bad faith, usually gets their attention big time! The thing I would do, is give it a shot. You have nothing to lose by pressing them.

Just a note about freezing pipes in general.....if there is ever any suspicion that the temps may fall below the freezing point, always turn on a faucet in the house furthest from the street and just let it slow trickle during the freeze time. Moving water will not usually freeze solid and in a number of instances has saved my own plumbing from freezing up.

Good luck to you General and I hope that in some small way, this helps.

I am not a plumber either, however, I am in the trades and have experienced frozen pipes many times.

There are a couple of really good questions above me.

How old is the house and what kind of pipes are in the house?

Houses built 25-40 years ago tend to be plumbed with galvinzed pipes. Over time and with severe temperature fluctuations this type of metal can become extremley brittle. Older than 40 years cast iron was widley used. Cast iron is pretty tuff stuff and the joints were either threaded or slipfit with a fabric o-ring of sorts. This is a fairly hardy system that tends to recover from freezing fairly well. Newer houses are plumber mostly with PVC (in my opinion this stands for Pretty Vulnerable Crap!) What I mean is the joints have almost no ability to flex when frozen water expands inside of them. Lots of times I have seen joints all busted up and be the only apparent bad spot only to find a month or two down the road that somewhere in a straight run of pipe a hairline fracture occured allowing water to seep very slowly and remain undetected untill mold has grown so thick in your walls that you are coughing and wheezing all the time in your house or, it has puddled up enough to destroy a wall cavity or sheet rock ceiling without any warning.

My advise: If your insurance company is willing to pay for a comletely new system and your are doing major surgery on the house any way this is a great time to be confidnet that your home and alll its vital functions are sound.

Water form inside wall cavities and quiet little attic spaces is your enemy in soooo many ways.

Good luck!

The house is over 100 years old, but the pipes are copper and PVC (supply lines are copper, drains are PVC).

This house was frozen solid. Even the water in the toilet bowls was frozen solid. I found two drain P-traps that were blown out due to the ice.

Incidentally, the water/sewer bill is $1,000. 200,000+ gallons of water.