Greetings once more from the Oregon outback. Posting has been light -- in large part because of the amount of effort we’ve put in to the process of battening down the hatches for our first winter on our land.

The number of things that have gone wrong, due to the mixture of cold and wet, has been relatively staggering -- and honestly, most of it was unforeseen (we’re incredibly glad that we’ve started with a tiny structure, that will eventually become my office; so we can incorporate all these lessons into the plans for our full home).

But, there is a subset of our disasters, which I can safely say were entirely predictable. And those mostly revolve around the plumbing system. As you may have read, late last year, we built our own gravity-powered, spring-fed water system. It was tremendously draining, exciting and rewarding.

And, when I finished it in August, I knew at the time that the water system would be susceptible to winter freeze -- because I hadn’t buried or insulated any of it.

Now, for those new to this game, there are two separate, but related concerns: freezing, and bursting. Your water system can freeze -- in which case, water flow stops. But, water flow will return again when the water thaws. Sometimes, however, freezes can cause pipe, hose, joints and canisters to burst or explode. And that’s when the real fun begins.

First, because when part of your plumbing explodes -- you likely won’t know it until the water thaws and starts flowing again. And, if you’re lucky enough to have that burst pipe indoors (or, better yet, in the walls), you learn about it when your home starts flooding (as mine did in December; but that’s not part of this story).

So, why didn’t I bury my system? Well, for one, I’m lazy. And the thought of burying my 1,000’ of plumbing line, which runs down a tree-covered draw on our mountain, was just too much to bear. It would take weeks to get that done. Plus, the vast majority of our water system is poly pipe (the black flexible hosing), rather than PVC (the hard white piping) -- and poly pipe (which is flexible) is much less susceptible to bursts. So, I figured I could deal with a frozen system for a while, as long as no damage was done -- at least, that was preferable to the amount of work required to bury the system.

But, what I neglected to factor into the mix were the few elements in my water system that are not made up of that flexible poly pipe. And one of these is my sediment filter bay.

For those who do not know, a sediment filter is just what it sounds like: it filters out the sediment from the water. This is important because that sediment will cause all sorts of wear and tear on your water heaters and plumbing fixtures. So I assembled three of these filters together: a 50-micron filter, a 20-micron filter, and a 5-micron filter (in descending order) to get out all that gunk.

The canisters for these filters are hard (not flexible) plastic. Which means that they can explode if the water inside freezes. But I did not want to bury my filter bay 18” underground, because, while that would have protected against freezing, I would then have to dig that up, and re-bury it, every time I needed to change my filters (or even check the filters to see if they needed changing).

Instead, I opted to run my water line over night, by keeping my garden hose running. I had thought that keeping the water running will suppress freezing (moving water freezes at a lower temperature than still water). Turns out, however, that I didn’t have quite enough flow to prevent freezing with some of the December temperatures that we had.

And so, one night, all three filters in our bay exploded. Which we quickly discovered when we didn’t have any water.

Of course, this meant that I had to rebuild my filter bay. But (obviously) I also didn’t want to rebuild it just so that the filters would explode again. And, I still really didn’t want to bury the filters, because that’d be an on-going hassle.

So I asked around for some options and suggestions, and I eventually rigged up an insulation system from scratch. It was so easy, that I thought my sharing this experience might be a helpful reference some day to someone with a similar need. So here goes...

It turns out that you don’t need much heat to prevent the water in the filters from freezing. Obviously, you just need enough heat to keep the temperature above 32 degrees. And, perhaps surprisingly, a 40-watt lightbulb does the job (long live incandescent bulbs!) -- if you are able to trap the heat.

So I purchased a plastic tub (like a Sterilite) -- one large enough to contain all three of my filters, as well as the main valve that feeds them. And I purchased the spray foam insulation -- the kind that expands as it dries. And I sprayed the tub full of that foam. I used four cans of the spray foam -- and I’ll likely go and get more to thicken the lining.

I had to dig and flatten the land, and reposition the filters on it, to try to get a decent spot on which to place the tub.

I then ran an extension work light out to the filters, and hung the lamp directly on the hose. And then I covered the filters with the tub.

I did splurge on one element of the system. Instead of plugging the work-light directly into an outlet, I purchased a thermostatically-controlled outlet. It turns power on when the temperature drops below 38-degrees, and turns the power off when the temperature gets above 50-degrees (you learn about so many awesome toys doing this type of work). So I plug this thermostat-plug into my outlet, and then plug my work-light into the thermostat-plug, and I’m done. The light turns on and off by itself, and ensures the water keeps flowing through my filters.

It’s been running for a few weeks now, and thankfully no more exploded filters (which is good, because these canisters are not cheap -- it’s about $60 for the heavy-duty one that holds the 50-micron filter).

Share and enjoy!

-r