A few questions about preventing pipes freezing, ice on house

[nancyd]

It's tough to keep up with these below freezing temps. Ihave a fe questions and maybe Ed Roupe can answer.

Should people keep a little water running at the sinks to prevent pipes from freezing?

Should I be knocking down those ice spikes from my roofline?

I've been hearing a loud bang at different parts from outside the house...what is that? Sounds like a ramrod against the castle door.

[workingmom]

Tom Fontaine Here,

If you have had issues with frozen pipes or the house is older, cracking the the faucet 2nd floor best can help.

The cracking noise is your house telling you its freaking cold out, its the exterior contracting.

Keeping the ice off your eves is important. If we get alot of snow and an attic that has some heat loss the ice builds up at the eves. The snow acts like insulation and melts on the surface of the roof. The water flows to the eve and freezes on the existing ice. Water builds up and can potentially leak inside the house.

These are a few things that can happen but hopefully don't.

[nancyd]

Wow Tom, Thank you!!!!  You are better than Mr. google!  Thank you for your excellent explanations. So appreciated.
Nancy

[rod anode]

put a pot of coffee on and I will explain

[al brodeur]

a word of caution as told to me by a local plumbing and heating man (here in south eastern Pa)
a lot of people trying to save money would fire up the wood stoves and or fireplaces to save the oil heater from running.
and in some systems having hot water baseboard heat, the water lines would freeze up in the heating system.
he told me that he had a couple of them do that.
now it does not get stupid cold like in Fairfax it still gets cold--no streaking.

[nancyd]

Thanks...in our situation, the only heating source we run is a Harmon Pellet Stove ....the propane heating system is off. So the basement, which is really the ground floor doesn't get heat. The pellet stove does a pretty good job, but not at 30 below. We save about 4k a heating season by just running the pellet stove.

But I do worry about pipes freezing, so I the faucets dripping.. It's a Long WINTER!