Well, Sunday we had a brief heat spike all the way up to nearly thirty degrees, quite a bit higher than predicted, and along about 7:00 that evening I heard the miraculous sound of gurgling pipes. Being well water, the torrent was full of clay, and moreover my tub drain proved frozen up. (I used towels to soak up the standing water.) The hot water wasn’t working, so it was half a loaf, but I had a functioning toilet again, and could at least do laundry in cold water. Luckily the drain from the washing machine wasn’t frozen, which I didn’t think of before I started a load, but God watches out for morons. Good thing, too, or I’d have been dead long ago.
I checked the hot water tap periodically through the evening, with diminishing hope, but by 10:30 that started working too, although while spitting out a load of black crap. Moreover, the tub drain had cleared. So all was well. Yesterday I went through the day waiting the next shoe to drop, but the water has continued to work. However…
It turns out that not only are we getting blanketed with snow today–I’d say we’ve about four to five inches at this point, and it’s to continue during the entire day–but temps are due over the next couple evenings to drop down again into the sub-zero range, perhaps as cold as nearly 10 below. So I’m worried about my pipes freezing up again, since I expect that freezing and unfreezing isn’t that great for them, even if they survived this time.
Next week the cold finally seems likely to snap, with temps as high as the mid-’30s or even into the low ’40s. I don’t need it that warm, but look forward to not getting dangerously low at night. Friday looks like that end of that stuff.
So if I make it through until Friday with my pipes not freezing again, I should be golden. Well, my car probably won’t start on Thursday, but I can live with that. That will take care of itself once the cold snap breaks. In the meantime, I’ll keep my heat jacked up for the next couple of nights (while worrying about my furnace), run the water and hope that the severe cold spell is short enough that I escape further incident.
And that’s the deal with that. Again, I do intend to have a review up by next weekend, for the next B-Masters roundtable, and will get back into the swing of things following that. Promise.
Thanks for all the support. You guys make me feel like George Bailey at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life.
