Will frozen traps burst?

[krosspen]

I want to not heat my cabin for weeks in the winter. This year for the first time I have plumbing. I have a valve in the well that allows all the water to drain back to the well when I shut the water off....and to be sure, I blow pressured air via a faucet. Even the pressure tank seems to empty... I hope.

What about my drains....the toilet, the traps? If the water in those freeze, do the traps and toilet break? ...or does the water just expand to a higher level when freezing, with no damage occurring?

I mistakenly bought RV Antifreeze.... I see now it is for supply lines, not waste lines. I imagine it would be effective in traps too, but wonder about effect on the septic system.

Hence my question about what will happen if I don't heat the cabin and there is water in the traps. I even thought of draining the traps and toilet somehow, but then I would have sewer gas building up in cabin, no?

 

[Psycho99]

>>>I mistakenly bought RV Antifreeze.... I see now it is for supply lines, not waste lines. I imagine it would be effective in traps too, but wonder about effect on the septic system.<<<

RV antifreeze is the way to go, the little you will have in your traps will not harm your septic, put a little in all of your traps, turn the toilet off and flush, add a little to the tank and bowl, if you have a water heater, turn it off and drain the water out of it, you should be fine.

 

[SlowDrip]

Psycho is correct, a little bit of RV antifreeze won't hurt anything, at least not any more than dumping drano and crap like that down your pipes does.

Generally speaking, traps won't burst because of freeze (as you already suspected, the water usually expands out of them) but in some cases damage can occur, especially in rapid cold snaps or drastic freeze/thaw patterns.

My brother-in-law had a disaster at his hunting camp last year because they didn't winterize his traps and we had some rapidly oscillating freeze/thaws.

 

[majakdragon]

Use the RV anti-freeze. If you have a sudden freeze, the threads on the connectors for traps could break. While normal expansion "may" allow frozen water to just raise upwards, the threads could cause a place for water to collect and break the trap.