Tips for keeping daylighted garage drain thawed?

Anyone have any ideas on how to keep a garage drain that is day-lighted free of ice and freezing shut?

My last house I had a garage drain that was day-lighted, and it would occasionally freeze shut at the end of the pipe. I would then usually take a long drill bit and drill through the ice to open it up….and it was a pain. I have the same setup at my new house and want to take care of it so I don’t have to deal with it this winter.

I was looking at putting some roof/gutter cable up into the pipe to thaw it or keep it thawed. Anyone know how that will hold up? Any other thoughts? Possibly add water softener salt to the drain?

Use pipe or roof eave heat tape fished through the drain.

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http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=roof+heat+tape&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aroof+heat+tape

Water softener salt in a sock.

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Water softener salt in a sock.

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bingo!! I just dumped salt in the drain and it never froze again.

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Water softener salt in a sock.

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bingo!! I just dumped salt in the drain and it never froze again.

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Wait! guys, can you explain a little further cause right now i’m not getting it. I have the exact same issue and was planning on making a giant pillow of insulation wrapped in poly to help my situation ,,but I like yours better!

Mine never freezes. There seems to be enough residual road salt in the slush that melts off my vehicles. I have radiant floor heat though so that may have some impact in keeping it thawed. Not really sure. I just know it never freezes shut.

Some guys just throw salt loosely in the drain. But, if you wash something down sometimes the water will wash all the pellets away. Put the salt in an old sock, zip tie the sock to the bottom of the grate and wham-o no more frozen drain and the salt stays put.

Major Bump:

We have 3 garage drains and they’re all good with a little softener salt. We have 2 downspout runs that are buried and run to daylight over the hill. Of these, one is froze shut at the end. It’s probably a ~100’ run under ground. I had put some softener salt down these too and didn’t have issues until now and only with the one.

So far I’ve got about 18” of ice from the daylight end thawed with a propane torch…but I’d bet there’s 8’ or so of ice. It’s 5” pvc. Any suggestions? I ran scalding hot water from the garage down the downspout with no luck. We’ve got a hot water pressure washer that I don’t want to mess with, but that’s the next step.

These are definitely getting heat tapes threaded up them next year. I thought I’d keep a close enough eye on them the first winter in the new place, but turns out I didn’t.

What does “Day-lighted” mean?

CaptainMusky wrote:

What does “Day-lighted” mean?

means it dumps on the ground and not to a sewer/drain field

Garden hose hooked to hot water. Shove it up the pipe from outside and let it eat the ice away.

Coletrain27 wrote:

means it dumps on the ground and not to a sewer/drain field

Gotcha

As mentioned by red eye, you need to bring water from the end.
Dumping from the uphill will not do it as the water hits cold then has no place to go.

Even cold water from your spigot will work but you have to feed uphill and keep feeding as it chews ice away.

I seen the bro in law once thaw a 4″ drain, with some pvc fittings, basically a hairdryer fitted, that blew into the pipe and had a chimney also for release. He thawed it in a few hours. The key was to allow it to drain and air to escape with targeting the air up the pipe. (he did this with various Y fittings)

Mine’s froze a couple times in 8 years. I’ve just thrown a little salt in and dumped a little water over it. I guess you could also just dump a gallon of high strength winter windshield washer down the drain also.

Windshield washer fluid will help thaw it out, and salt like others have mentioned will keep it from re freezing