I live in a multilevel house with the garage under and the heating pipes go through the garage at the ceiling from the lower level and on to the bedroom over the garage. The electricity went out for a bit the other night and got me thinking -- what if it was out for an hour or longer -- would those pipes in the cold garage freeze and break??

Havce lived here a few years without a problem but the northeast is particularily snowy/stormy/cold this winter and the electricity has gone out a few times. Any suggestions - PLEASE.

Thank you. On top of everything the garage door has a push button opener and if the lights go out you can not open the garage door and there is no access from the house or anywhere. HELP

Of course heating piping can freeze I made a fortune during the greater NYC Freeze up.

Steam systems if properly pitched and the condensate return lines are under ground they may survive a freeze up a lot longer then a hot water system that goes down.

Even cast iron traps can freeze up, Ice can really exert amazing pressures

Is there anything I can do to help prevent this from happening. As I said the pipes go around the garage by the ceiling.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks.

Sorry I am new at this and I put your name in the subject by mistake. Anyway, if you did not read that --- how can I remedy the pipe situation since they go around the top of the garage by the ceiling?

Thanks.

"Thank you. On top of everything the garage door has a push button opener and if the lights go out you can not open the garage door and there is no access from the house or anywhere. HELP"

The opener has a manual release cable on the trolly. Pull that and it release the door from the opener and you can manually open the door.

If you are saying that there is no "man door" to enter from either the house or outside except via the garage door then you need to IMMEDIATELY get a manual door release.

http://www.aaaremotes.com/key-release-lock.html

Thank you. I am going to call them tomorrow to see if I can do this . I think there is a lever on the pull up door and the whatever is in the middle of the garage.

Hi even insulating the piping is no guarantee that after prolonged outage the pipes will not freeze.

Even some areas in NYC like mine have over head power lines and we had our share of brown outs and some minor black outs.

Just make sure you are covered under your home owners policy and hope that if there is a power outage that it is not more then two days of temperatures below freezing.

Once the power goes out heat tapes are useless, electric heats are also of no use.

The majority of the freeze ups I have is lack of common sense of the building owners.

For example one family took off for the entire month of February and figured why keep the heat on if no one is home BAD MOVE as there was over $68,000 in plumbing and heating damages.

Like Bill suggested check the garage door and possibly think of weather stripping so the area does not get below 45 degrees, give yourself some room for error