My daughter works on the Water Utility and they’ve been going steady with 2 crews out thawing water lines and working weekends also. She said they had 15 calls today alone and we live in a small city of 10,000. The city is telling everyone to run the water and the bill will be adjusted. It’s going to get worst when it starts to thaw because it will push the frost down more!
I’ve seen and helped my friend do the welder trick years ago when he lived around here. The first time he asked me to go along and help I thought he was nuts but it works and good too. Starting a fire was the biggest worry, it happens, hasn’t happen to him yet.
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Back in the day when I was inspecting new city water main installations, part of the final inspection/testing included a conductivity test where we hooked the welder to the new mains and ran them up to something like 400 amps for so many minutes to prove that conductivity existed in the line – just for freeze events like this. It was a standard requirement per the American Water Works Assoc installation guidelines for city mains in MN. I’m not so sure they do it anymore though. These tests were all done on ductile iron pipe with bonding lugs/straps, not copper house services.
I think with global warming though, they changed the rules because it was never supposed to get this cold here anymore.
I’m a city inspector and we still do conductivity tests on ductile…. Problem is, most are installing C900 PVC mains which have proven very good. Wonder what happens when they freeze???
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A few years back we had a 3/4″ copper line freeze solid (pipe actually burst) Hearing about using a welder we gave it a try. We cut the line at both ends so that no stray voltage or amperage would go a place we didn’t want. We had good connections to the pipe, We had extra heavy cables, we had a 250 amp power source.
after 8 hours and 2 burnt up cables the pipe was still frozen.
It sounds like you cut the pipe between your connection points, that will not complete the circuit you need to thaw the pipes. 
When you use a thawing machine or a welding machine to thaw water piping, you need to make sure you have a currnt flow through the frozen area. If you cut the pipe in between your clamps, the current will flow to ground and overheat your conneting cables.
Get an amp probe and test each side of the cable leads, they should be close to equal amp readings, depending on the length of the piping you are trying to thaw. This will show that you have a complete circuit and have current passing through the frozen section of piping.
It will thaw your pipes, I have done it hundreds of times.
The pipe was not cut between the points, we had no way to get flow through the pipe at the time.
I’m sure that was the problem.
A good friend of mine just had his water main freed up with the welder, cost him $1000.00. The guy that did the work said he was getting around fifteen house calls a day…
Add one more to the list.
Phone call this morning said our lines are frozen as well.
$200.00 per hour for the guy with the welder.
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Add one more to the list.
Phone call this morning said our lines are frozen as well.
$200.00 per hour for the guy with the welder.
That’s a lot cheaper than what my friend paid, considering he said it took the guy forty minutes to get it free. I don’t think i’ll tell him what you paid…he may have a heart attack 
My 1st thought was $200 a hour was cheap. How quick are they getting to you brian?
The calls are still coming in even with warmer weather. They have slowed a little but still 4 since Monday morning.
Our pipes were thawed out last night. The guys are working 8 to 8 pm.
350 amps for 30 minutes heated the water line to 75 degrees before we got a trickle.
Seems the lines are freezing where the house line t’s off the main line in the road. No snow cover = frost goes deeper.
We have about 30 people in the Five City Area with or have had frozen pipes.
We were instructed to run a garden hose in the yard, away from our drain field at 100 gallons per minute to keep the lines open.
If visiting, please bring your skates. I’ll have the hot chocolate on.
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