So, we've been having this extraordinarily cold weather around here. We actually thought we were pretty well prepared and that we were going to make it through unscathed but earlier this afternoon we had a little bit of an unpleasant surprise!
I was sitting in my home office, getting ready to do some writing and suddenly it sounded like somebody was taking a shower upstairs. Which was sort of unusual because it was early afternoon and most of the showers around here happen either the first thing in the morning or at night.
I looked around and it took me a little while to figure out where the spraying water sound was actually coming from. Turned out it was coming from the adjacent utility room, specifically from a hole in the wall surrounding the main pipe that comes in from the outside. And it was not a just a little bit, it was quite a gusher... about like somebody taking a good strong shower!
Slight snag here: the water cutoff valve actually did absolutely nothing because it only serves the water inside the house, and this was coming from a break right at the wall and being forced in. So in deep freeze weather I had to go out and find the street cutoff, while Mrs. Denmarkguy and our son — who's spending the winter here — served as "Bucket Brigade" to keep the fountain of icy water from completely flooding our downstairs.
Turning off the water at the street ended up taking much longer than expected — something akin to 15 minutes — because where we are located the box that contains the water meters (ours, and our neighbor's) regularly gets invaded by moles who push loads of dirt in there and so the meter ends up getting hidden, along with the shut-off valve, under a pile of dirt. In this case frozen dirt.
Yes, we do check it and clean it out run the regular basis, but apparently since late summer and now the moles have been busy and there was a good couple of 5-gallon buckets worth of dirt, rocks and roots I had to remove (with a small shovel and my bare hands) before I could even get to the shut-off valve. All of this with icy fingers and water running into the house.
In due course, it did get shut off and then we went about the tedious job of getting everything dried out and cleaned up again. That was another couple of hours and we finally got the dehumidifier set up in there and everything has dried up pretty well since then.
I guess I have quite a lot of gratitude for the fact that I heard this immediately as it started happening so there was no major water damage. I can only imagine what it would have been like if we'd all been gone for the weekend — because it is a long holiday weekend — and water would have been gushing into our lower level for 24 or 48 hours without anybody being here!
Of course most of our local plumbing companies are running ragged at the moment because this very same problem is happening all over the place because we're just not used to cold to the degree that we have been having.
Sure we get freezing weather from time to time but not down into the teens and the single digits and even with responsible wrapping around everything — which we did have — it's generally not enough to withstand this kind of prolonged cold and that's what we discovered!
The way it looks, it's going to be Wednesday afternoon before one of the plumbing companies can get out here and take a look and hopefully install the fix of some sort. Sadly, that'll likely set us back about $500-600 or maybe more... so there goes any savings we had, along with any hope we were going to go on vacation this summer. Oh well.
Meanwhile, we're on bottled water and thankfully we had some of that as part of our emergency supplies... and we've been melting a little snow to use as "gray water" to flush toilets and such.
Ah, the joy of homeownership!
Thanks for stopping by, and hopefully you're having a better week than we are!
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Created at 2024-01-16 00:02 PST
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Here in Western Mass we do have very cold temps and the ground can freeze up to 4’ down. So all water pipes are run in trenches 4’ down. They enter the house at that level also.
It’s too bad that they don’t build to what could happen, only to what has happened. It’s really hard to rectify after the house is built.
And for homeowners with little margin, like you and I, it can mean a disaster. So it was really fortunate you were there and caught it!
Part of the problem around here is mostly related to sloppy construction. They will do everything completely correctly and winter safe all the way from the street to within a couple of feet of the house.
Then all that good work goes to waste because they choose to route the incoming pipe through an open wood crawl space that gets well below freezing to a spot where it goes safely into the house with proper insulation. Except for the fact that 18 inches of pipe is exposed to the elements. Well duh!
Sounds like a homeowners insurance will at least cover some of it, but there's $1,000 deductible. Oh well...
Sigh... I worry about this exact thing with my sister's rented house in NM...
Good thing you caught it early. I heard the library I used to frequent in Post Falls, Idaho had to close due to burst pipes. Seems they caught it before being closed for Monday and MLK day at least. We've been keeping a tap trickling to forestall frozen pipes here at home, and so far all is well.
Well, you guys get it so much colder than we do around here. Single digits in this part of the world is something that happens every 40 or 50 years not every winter.
Much of the problem we're having with this is the "genius engineering" involved in building the house originally. Someone had the great idea that running a T-junction for a sprinkler system off the main pipe from the street close to the house was a great idea. And then, furthermore, adding an outdoor hose bib off that junction... meaning that there are two weak points too close to open air. In this case the weak point that exploded (in part because our water pressure is so damn high) was the outdoor faucet.
I knew a couple that had a basement with no walk-out, just basically a rectangle of cement walls. They went on vacation and their washing machine line ruptured. They came home to an indoor pool they never had before. Now I always turn of the lines at the washing machine when ever leaving over night!
We're very grateful that we were actually home this weekend. Being a long holiday weekend there was a good chance we would have been out doing something and this could have sat here and just filled up for hours and hours. However the warnings of freezing rain but any plans we had on hold. And thank goodness for that!
Had we not been on site, the downstairs space including my office and our TV room would almost definitely have turned into a swimming pool!
That's a pretty funny and accurate map! Except, of course, nobody can actually afford to live in California...
That peek looks like a gold... simply beautiful ✨
Thank you. We do get some really beautiful views around here!