Unfreezing Frozen Pipes In Bath Or Basin

I really did wonder if this one would work!

Here in the UK we've had one of our coldest winters for years and lots of homes have suffered from frozen pipes.

There's variety of ways of dealing with this but this is one way I hadn't hear of before.

Get a bucket of hot water and a lot of salt (over here dishwasher salt can be bough quite cheaply from "pound shops".

Disolve the salt in the hot water. Keep adding salt until it no longer disolves.

Pour the resulting mixture down the pipe.

A little searching on Google would suggest that this works because the freezing point of a saturated salt/water solution is -21.1 degrees Celcius. So, the hot water will start to melt the the frozen pipe whilst the salt will stop the water freezing again once it cools it it doesn't unblock the pipe first time.

If it doesn't work first time, as they say on the shampoo bottles "rinse and repeat".

It's worth also saying that if you're going to try to use this method don't add any other chemicals that may react with the salt.