As the popular wisdom says, whoever does not work is not mistaken. In the process of building and reconstructing my house in the village, I made some very serious mistakes, which then had to be very difficult to correct. And one of them is the lack of heating of sewer pipes. In the very first winter, or rather, in the spring (in the spring, when warming, the cold goes deeper into the ground), my sewer pipe froze. This happened in the month of April, in the place where the pipe passes through the foundation, there the depth of the pipe is small, only 50 cm from the surface. This happened most likely because for about a month no one lived in the house, and there was no movement of water in the pipe.
I’ll tell you about how I defrosted and cleaned my sewer another time, and now I will dwell on heating in detail.
Perplexed by the protection of the sewage pipes from freezing at night and during my absence, I decided to make it electric heated.
In most cases, a heating cable is used for this. About this one, waterproof, with double insulation and an additional braid for heating pipes, cornices, gutters, open areas.
Or this one, a little simpler and cheaper, designed for dry rooms.
But having looked at the price of heating cable in stores and on the construction market from 400 rubles per meter, and having estimated that the length of my sewer pipes to the drain pit is almost 24 meters, I realized that this was not our way.
And most importantly, according to the instructions, the heating cable is wrapped around the sewer pipe, and yet my pipe has been buried for half a year now, as it has been buried in the ground! How to dig it out in April and remake everything?
However, then, with a little thought in my brain, I came up with an original solution that cost me 600 rubles and did not require redoing or digging anything. I bought 15 meters of a simple (yellow) Duralight based on incandescent lamps.
Just in case, I remind you that duralight is an ordinary garland of small bulbs, hermetically sealed in a transparent plastic cord.
The end and the beginning of the cord with bulbs are also well sealed.
[/ center]Duralight from the 220 Volt network works through a small controller (flasher) and is usually used in outdoor advertising. In the city of Ufa, for example, Lenin Street is almost entirely decorated with duralight patterns.
Naturally, during operation, the duralight bulbs get a little warm, which was exactly what I needed. The heat transfer of a duralight depends on the color, and according to the passport, is about 13 watts per linear meter. According to its technical parameters, a branded heating cable has a heat transfer of about 18 ... 20 watts per linear meter. But the price of duralight is an order of magnitude (almost 10 times!) Lower.
Moreover, I did not need such an amount of heat in the pipe, so I connected a duralight through a diode. The result was such a little scheme.
The diode can be used of any type and size, the main thing is that it has a reverse voltage of at least 300 volts and a maximum forward current of at least 3 amperes.
As a switch, a regular 6 amp automatic machine is used, installed in a common lighting panel.
In addition, I note that when the duralight lamps are turned on through the diode, they light up in full heat, this significantly extends its service life, as well as saves electricity.
Unwind duralight, turn it on. After a while, when the duralight warms up a little and becomes more flexible, we put it directly into the sewer. I did not shoot the process of putting duralight into the sewer pipe, there is nothing interesting or special about this.
The end of the duralight is brought out and sealed with silicone sealant. We tighten the sealed box with the diode right on the pipe.
In the evening, when everyone has already washed themselves in the house, or before leaving for a long time, we turn on the machine and heat the sewer. In the morning, or on arrival - turn off.
Water pipes can also be heated with duralight, securing it with electrical tape from below, parallel to the pipe and additionally wrapping the whole household with a ribbon cut from foil isolone (foil to the pipe). Many in our village are mine homemade helped to warm the water supply.
As a result of the work of this improvised heating system, the next summer I no longer had to deal with digging up the sewer and reworking it. So the duralight lies in the pipe, it works and does not bother anyone. For the ninth winter, how this idea works.
Frankly, two years ago, half of the bulbs burned out or turned off, why - I do not know. Nothing is eternal. I went to the city, bought a new piece of duralight, pulled out the old one and put a new one in its place. Before throwing the old duralight out of the pipe, I carefully examined it; I did not find any faults or signs of depressurization. Apparently, it just burned out.