Yessiree.?ÿ Felt good too.
Pipes froze up Friday morning when the temp dropped to about 5F.?ÿ I tried all day to warm things up but to no avail.?ÿ 1940 construction practices for stem-wall & crawl space houses wasn't the best.
I've lived here for 25 years and I've never had the entire house freeze up.?ÿ Ten years ago it was down to -5F and all that froze was a hot water line to a washer on the north side of the house.?ÿ Over the years I've added vent covers and plumbing upgrades.?ÿ I thought I had it covered, but I was wrong.?ÿ?ÿ
The morning it froze I had been up early and had all the faucets trickling.?ÿ I sat down to watch the news for about an hour.?ÿ After that there was no water anywhere in the house.
Over the last six days I've tried to imagine why the whole house froze up at one time.?ÿ Usually it was just a tap on the north wall or the toilet in the back bathroom that's seldom used.?ÿ I reckoned the line into the house from the meter had frozen.?ÿ Its one exposed spot would be where it exits the ground just inside the foundation wall.?ÿ From there it goes vertical about 24" and spreads out all tucked up (and insulated) and nestled between floor joist.
But it's never frozen there before.?ÿ Then I realized I had my service line from the meter to the house replaced about 18 months ago.?ÿ The original line had been galvanized pipe.?ÿ The new line is sch40 PVC.?ÿ That is the only difference.
So I have a question to all you engineers (and anybody that passed Thermodynamics their junior year):?ÿ Would the galvanized pipe have conducting more heat from the ground than the PVC??ÿ?ÿ
Just wondering.?ÿ That is the only difference in the system.
And the thaw was weird.?ÿ It had gotten up to 25F briefly today and I had hopes the pipes might thaw out.?ÿ But the sun went down and the temp started to tumble.?ÿ By about 8:30PM it was down to 15F, headed for 5F tonight.?ÿ I was back here in my cave and heard the water running in the closest bath where I had left the spigots open to keep pressure off the empty lines.?ÿ Like a miracle the lines thawed all at once at about the same temp as when they froze.
A quick check under the house to make sure nothing had burst and I realized I was back in business!
Tomorrow I guess I'll tackle that week old stack of dishes....
Its one exposed spot would be where it exits the ground just inside the foundation wall.?ÿ From there it goes vertical about 24"
I can't explain your experience, but I know that around here -- where it very rarely gets below 35?øF -- most homeowners (including me) have insulated that exposed bit of pipe.?ÿ In 1990 we had an unusual cold snap, with a low of about 19?øF, and uninsulated pipe risers burst all over town.?ÿ Over the next week or so there was a run on foam pipe insulation and PVC tape as owners, plumbers and handymen set about insulating water service risers.
Did you remember to brush yer teeth and change yer drawers? ?????ÿ
same here, paden.?ÿ somehow nothing burst, and the pressure was a tad low on account of all the broken mains around town, and we have to boil it to drink it... but i don't smell like a surveyor this morning.
@flga-2-2
Just for the fun of it you should try to brush your teeth with just a bottle of water.?ÿ It's hilarious.?ÿ And washing my hands with bottled water wasn't fun either.?ÿ You can warm up bottled water in the microwave, but you have to first loosen the cap I found out.?ÿ At least we had lights and heat.
My biggest dilemma was lugging 6.5 gal jerry jugs over and back from a neighbor's house for toilet flushing.?ÿ Carrying over 50 lbs. of water 100 yds. over ice and through knee-deep snow was exhausting.?ÿ And doing that about three times a day kept me hopping.?ÿ
I will avoid any critique of my wife's decisions as to when a toilet really needs to be flushed.?ÿ I conserved water for the toilets by frequenting my special spot back behind the garage.?ÿ It comes natural to a surveyor.
And I would also like to give a round of applause to the unsung heroes of the food industry that give us microwave food.?ÿ It's come a long way since I last tried it twenty years ago.?ÿ
I hope this winter storm of Feb. 2021 will soon be just a bad memory.?ÿ
We lost power at 8am on Monday and didn't get it back until Thursday at about 5:30pm (stayed on since then). We were lucky though, we stayed at a friend's house who had both power and water until Wednesday night. That first night, I took a shower for the first time in 4 days and it felt pretty good.
It's good to be back home though, food in the fridge, thermostat set to 68F, snow is melting off the house and driveway and this morning we have big beams of sunlight filling the living room.
Stay safe and warm everyone!
I will avoid any critique of my wife's decisions as to when a toilet really needs to be flushed.?ÿ
I suppose a toilet seat on an orange Home Depot bucket wouldn??t work for her?
@squirl
68 degrees is what SWMBO keeps the temperature in the summer and 78 degrees in the winter. I gave up (involuntarily) thermostat duty about 20 years ago. ?????ÿ
Mr Payden, it's ok. Baths and showers are overrated anyway!
N
...I suppose a toilet seat on an orange Home Depot wouldn??t work for her?
I wouldn't even ask.. 😉
Remember, this is a woman that thinks washing a plastic doggie poop-scooper in the automatic dishwasher is gauche.?ÿ?ÿ
Oh I??ll never forget that or Norman, or Holden, Pops, Sharon, and Phil??s 66? I can relate to the cars of the 60??s all the way until one day BOOM no more distributor, carburetor etc. The whole thing covered in plastic, no room to work on anything even if you could identify and locate it. ??What??s the world coming to?? (As each and every one of our ancestors said at least 100 times) ?????ÿ
I would have to say that wherever the pipe is exposed is where it froze.?ÿ ?ÿEven a inch is enough to freeze.?ÿ ?ÿI used to live in a travel trailer and have more than enough experience in frozen pipes.?ÿ ?ÿThen when I moved up in the world to a manufactured home, went through the whole ordeal again!?ÿ ?ÿ I have my plaque for Master Heat Tape and wrap installer.?ÿ Make sure all is covered with at least the foam.?ÿ The best thing I ever did was put in a circulating pump.?ÿ You install it on the hot water line by the hot water heater and put a another valve on the furthest away connection (sink, etc.).?ÿ ?ÿThat valve allows the hot water to flow into the cold side and closes when the temp reaches a certain level.?ÿ ?ÿNever had another frozen pipe under the house.?ÿ ?ÿInstant hot when you turn on the faucet and only down side is the cold side is warm at first before going cold.
It's come a long way since I last tried it twenty years ago.?ÿ
If it's brown, flush it down.?ÿ If it's yellow, let it mellow.
When we had a water emergency in town some years back, newscasters were frowning when they read that script.
Phil??s 66?
Bill's 66, try and keep up....
?ÿ
??The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.?
???ÿ
Plumbers are going to be high demand for a while down your way Paden. Back in the day when I homesteaded my property I didn't have running water for a number of years. Use to heat a big soup pot of water on the stove to boiling and mix it with cold water on the back deck in a 40 quart cooler and run a garden hose into it to siphon the hot water down into a shower beneath the deck. One sunny spring day I was taking a shower down there, appropriately decked out in my birthday suit when a lady political worker came around the back of the house to encourage some political position or another. Heard something but had soap in my eyes when I heard her say something like "Oh my!" Well I wasn't about to panic so just calmly asked her if she would mind waiting until I got out of the shower. She was red as a beet and I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. Will never take running water for granted again.
Are you sure it was the lines in your home??ÿ If they ALL went out at once and ALL came back on at once it may have been water main itself that was frozen or otherwise out of service.?ÿ If the lines in the house were frozen I would have expected for "chunks" of ice to come out of the taps at the beginning.
Andy
@flga-2-2
It was Bill's 66.?ÿ
Phil's was the DX station across town.?ÿ Which was kind of weird because the guy that owned it was named Don.?ÿ 😉
That was my thought too.?ÿ Several calls to the city maintenance barn "verified" the mains had proper pressure.?ÿ I'm still not so sure.
I was also thinking the culprit may have been the valve at the meter.?ÿ The line from the main and to the house is only 12" deep (I've measured it) at the meter.?ÿ The service line goes back down into the ground quickly, but still only has that miserable little cast iron lid over the top...complete with a hole.
Tim's Muffler Shop was owned and operated by Tom Pugh.?ÿ Maybe he got a heck of a deal on a screwed up sign for the business.?ÿ
