Close off freezing pipe

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Pavesa

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Hi

I live in Nova Scotia in a house built around 1850 and over the years there's been a fair bit of barbarity committed in terms of building maintenance and installation.

One endemic problem has been a copper pipe that freezes. I'm attaching some pictures of the arrangement. This pipe runs off the mains into the building (mains is A in the photos) which runs parallel to and about a foot away from a stone outside wall in the basement floor. The pipe (B) comes off the mains, runs along the floor to the outside wall, goes up the wall (C) and then divides with a T at the top of the wall. One way from the T goes through the wall to an outside non-freeze wall hydrant and the other goes along the basement ceiling to under the downstairs shower on the floor above. From the condition of the copper, it seems like these pipes have been in this damp floor for many years. I am rather concerned as to their condition and I'd be grateful for any thoughts on this. They are pretty oxidized as you can see from the pictures.

Unfortunately, the combination of the mains pipe (A) being near the outside wall and the pipe (C) running up the stone outside wall and then running outside to the hydrant means that it is prone to freezing. With a temperature below zero fahrenheit it always freezes and it does this a couple of times every winter.

I'm planning to resolve the freezing by removing the feed from the mains in - literally cutting off the section of pipe from the mains in where it is marked B on the photo up to just below the T at the top of the wall and then inserting an alternate feed into the other end of the pipe near the shower, more towards the center of the building and away from the cold outside wall. I'm also inserting a valve in the section of the pipe that leads to the outside hydrant a few feet from the outside wall so I can close this and drain water out of the pipe before winter so it can't freeze and transmit the cold and ice back into the building.

I have a couple of sharkbite caps to cap off the copper vertical copper pipe at the bottom near the mains pipe and just below the T at the top of the wall.

Other than the condition of the copper mains pipe, my other concern is whether a sharkbite fitting would work to cap the section of pipe on the floor at B. The pipe is pretty oxidized as you can see and I wonder how workable capping this with a sharkbite fitting would be. Another possibility would be to cap the pipe as it starts to go up the wall at about point C in photo 2 where it is in better condition. I would need to saw the pipe off rather than using my pipe cutter though. The pipe is in good shape at the top of the wall below the T so that's no problem.

Thanks for any thoughts/suggestions

Pavesa
Photo1.JPG Photo2.JPG
 
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