What water lines get heat tape?

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hstassen
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu May 02, 2019 7:53 pm

This is my first Iowa winter in a mobile home and I am little confused.

Underneath my trailer there is a line that has existing heat tape that runs from a hole in the ground to my water heater (the pipe is blue plastic esque). These one will need to be re-heat taped. However, I also have a line that comes out of my water heater that runs all of the way down the side of my house to the kitchen, as well as across the house to the bathroom (is a larger diameter copper/metal pipe at least 1/2" lumen). Is this one also a water line that needs to be insulated, or is this a gas line?

Also, where do you plug heat tape into? The existing dated tape has a plugin at the bottom (that you would put in an outlet), but there are no outlets nearby. I don't have a good setup for using an extension cord as whoever sided the house covered the external outlets, so in theory I would have to run a cord in through the back door and across the hallway in order to reach an outlet, which would put the cord not only in the hallway, but across two pinch points of doors before reaching the nearest outlet.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated! Right now I am getting an estimate from a plumber and if the fee is within reason, I am going to have them take care of it for safety sake.
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Greg
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Posts: 5696
Joined: Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:01 pm
Location: Weedsport, NY

The service line from the ground gets heat taped & insulated.
You have a copper line running outside your home? I'm a little confused on that one.

There should be an outlet onder your home to plug into. If not you may want to add one possibly with a switch to turn the heat tape off in warm weather.

Greg
"If I can't fix it, I can screw it up so bad no one else can either."
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