I no understand.....

[wellie]

Trousers and I have just got in from Babysitting Aunty Wellie's Little Twinkle Toes, and it's minus seven degrees out there. Bbbrrr!

Turn the cold water tap on, and cold water comes out.
Turn the hot water tap on, and no water comes out at all. Same upstairs as downstairs.

We have a combi-boiler.
Our central heating is working perfectly, so....
We're sat here scratching our heads.

Can anyone elighten us as to what's occurring? We feel a bit thick.
Please someone put us out of our misery and make us go 'DOH!'
X

[SarzWix]

How bizarre
Does the boiler fire up when you turn the tap on? As it would if it was heating the water on the way to the tap? Or is the water not even getting to the boiler?

[wellie]

Ah thanks Sarzwix for being awake and helpful to our confusion....

No. The boiler doesn't 'fire up' and the hot water engaged light don't come on neither.
But everything's tickety-boo on the heating front.

Bizarre ain't it?

[SarzWix]

Right, well, I'm not a plumber, but a bit of Google has confirmed what I thought - the water in your cental heating is more or less a closed system - the water is in it & goes round your rads, into the boiler, and back round your rads. The hot water for the taps on the other hand is fed from the mains - it comes from outside and into the boiler to be heated. There's a good chance that your cold water comes from a header tank in the loft, which is also fed from outside. So, if it's really cold, the pipes might be frozen, but you'd still have cold water from the header tank, your heating would still work, but your hot water wowuldn't be getting fed from the frozen pipe....

Or I could be COMPLETELY wrong ...

[wellie]

Ooh, you're THIS close Sarzwix! (see Wellie do the action....) but we have no header tank in the loft, and no hot water tank. All water is fed to the cottage from mains outside. And Trousers reports that our Outside Taps are frozen.

It's not sounding good really, is it? Mains Water Pipe frozen to the cottage perhaps?
I'm not liking the sound of this already.......

[SarzWix]

Hmmmmmm. I'm a bit stumped too then... I know even under the ground pipes can freeze below -5�c because my dad's do it all the time, but ALL of his water goes off then as he is spring-fed rather than mains... It's a mystery all right! I'd be very tempted to fill up jugs/bowls/pans with the cold water just in case you get up tomorrow & that's stopped too
Wish I could think of any other ideas, hope it doesn't cost you an arm & a leg whatever it is...

[wellie]

Thanks sweetie.
We've filled the kettle for a brew in the morning. And as long as we can start the car tomorrow, we have friends/clients who would lend us their bathrooms for a hot bath or shower whenever it's required.
Trousers has just been outside and taken photos. The temperature guage is registering minus ten out there. So I think we'll summise that it's a frozen mains water pipe, and cozy down for the night.
Thanks again darling.
Wellie
X

[SarzWix]

No worries hun I'm about to cosy down myself. Sweet dreams!

[trousers]

tis the forest plumbing ,that and the fact the hot water feed to the boiler is frozen,its minus 10 now,lots of brass monkeys running around clutching thier groins

[jacob marley]

Why do you think it is frozen outside when your cold water tap's are working it would seem to me that the suply to hot water is frozen inside in the..jacob loft

[scarey55]

No help at all to you but I just thought you'd like to know there are a few cold monkeys here too

Minus 12.5 on the way to Montlucon station this morning and the handbrake was frozen in the on position

[Hans Mum]

hope youve got things sorted....this happened to me once and the water froze in the pipes inside the house we had to use hair dryers and hot water bottles to free them up

[trousers]

hi peeps it is very odd, the pipes to out side tap and laundryshed are cold and these are frozen, the boiler is in the kitchen and is fed along the wall inside the kitchen behind the kichen units then out sideto mains, the heating is going fine, cold tap direct from mains in kitchen is running,so pipes to boiler must be frozen

[PAULW]

Try this, hot water freezes faster than cold water, it could be that the water in the pipe between the tap and the boiler cooled rapidly therefore causing the blockage, I would be inclined to crack the tap so when the thaw sets in the water will start to drip out, when I worked in kennels we used to break the ice on the water butts and pour the cold water over the taps to thaw them out.

[trousers]

thanks paul, the tap is just starting to drip,weve warmed up a bit its now -5,and trying to snow,