Even when you do everything right, the cold will still find a way to screw you. I thought we got ready by going and getting plenty of food, filling our vehicles up with gas, I am not sure why that was important, wrapping our outdoor pipes and finally running some water to avoid frozen pipes in the morning. Well, even with the water not just dripping but running as slow as I could set them as, I still had to battle with frozen pipes all morning until a while ago.
I got the water running before we went upstairs last night in the kitchen and I thought that was that. I told DD to run the water in the bathroom downstairs and I even checked it, water was running in the sink, both hot and cold water. I then told Boy to get the water running in his bathroom upstairs. He just turned it on and it sounded like someone was taking a shower all night, but at least I didn't have to worry about that one, he did both the tub and the sink. I then had turned on the water in the bathtub in our bathroom and didn't worry much about the sink because it is not against an outside wall, it is on an internal wall.
Well, I guess the kitchen faucet, which has one lever that mixes both hot and cold depending on whether it leans to the right or the left was leaning a little too much to the HOT, so when I wanted to get some cold water I instinctively pulled it to the other side and noticed that there was no flow. I felt betrayed by all my efforts, I had even left the doors underneath open so that the space would be at the temperature of the kitchen. I put our thermostats at 72, not to be a dick, but if we did have a power outage, we wouldn't be sitting in too cold of a temp to start. According to Wife, the power outages we've been having have gotten as close as the other side of our community.
Once I realized we had frozen pipes, I went and got a space heater and pointed it into the cabinet under the sink. This was warming the area, but not necessarily the pipe, so I went and got Wife's hair dryer and pointed it at the pipe. The cord was not long enough, the outlets by design are too far away. I then thought of Boy's heat gun, which is like a hair dryer but gets a lot hotter. I pointed this thing at the pipes for about 5minutes, then promptly burned my fingers when I touched the copper pipes to see if they had warmed up. I then got frustrated and just left the heater on and about 5 minutes later the water started flowing. I then did the same with the shower downstairs, where the water was also not flowing. It took a couple hours with the space heater (in a metal pan to protect it if the water started flowing) and only about ten inches from the wall. I took a nap and then awoke to a yell from DD that the water was now running in the tub.
I am just going to say fudge it and run all the water sources all night long. I would hate to have to tear open a wall or worse, break through tile to fix some busted pipes. It is now 3:30pm and the yard is still covered in snow. I can't imagine we are going to go to work until Wednesday or Thursday. Wife just got out of a zoom session and she is not going to work until Thursday, the earliest. Boy is talking about having to go tomorrow, but his ass is not going to leave with snow on the ground, I don't need to loose another car and his job is way up north. Baby A doesn't even have classes, they were also cancelled even though he is doing remote learning. As long as the power stays on, we are good in the hood.
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