Frozen condensate pipes.... HOw many have you had recently?

[theanalyst]

So with the recent arctic like weather, we've had a heap loads of frozen condensate pipes...

Making me realise how inadequately a lot of them have been routed on initial install and making me think twice about routing them myself bearing in mind I dont want them to freeze in the future...

How many have you had and whats your answer to preventing them from freezing?

I always try and route them internally if the option exists, but if not, Ive had quite a few where the gutters have filled with snow and ice, and the condensate, which was routed into the gutter also got backed up -> then froze up...

The only other alternative I could think of was a dedicated soakaway with vertical fall on the pipe to prevent freezing where another drain is not available?

 

[quality]

We do refrigeration work on cold rooms and strap self regulating heat tape to the drain pipe connected to the drain pan of the evaporators which produces water during defrost but at -19 or so it would obviously freeze. this work very well but I don`t suppose this would be safe on a domestic instalation running down the side of the house. Would be ok at high level though and could be controlled with a frost stat. Just a thought🙂