Frozen Pipes

They say if you don't like the weather in Austin, just wait 10 minutes and it will change. It's true. And boy was it true the last few days.

After spring-like weather on Monday, an arctic blast came through Austin on Tuesday at 3.12 am. The wind woke me up at that time. It was like category 1 hurricane. It knocked down some branches, my neighbour's fence, and was throwing at the windows the dirt/sand that it picked up. It was so loud. The temperature plummeted 30 degrees in 30 minutes. The winter was in Austin.

It was the coldest day of the year. The temperature didn't really go above freezing during the day, so on Wednesday morning we were under rolling blackouts - 30 min scheduled power outages in different parts of the town. That meant that I was again awaken in the middle of the night by the alarm system beeping when the power came back on. Wednesday was another record coldest day.

My friend Norma called me during the day to let me know I should check on the outside pipes. She works for a plumbing company, and was warned that the styrofoam covers for the outside pipes we both have are not insulating enough in temperatures bellow freezing for more than few hours. She went home during lunch to check on their pipes, and two of them were frozen.

I went home a bit early, so I can deal with those pipes before it gets dark. 4 out of 4 outside pipes were frozen on my house. No water was coming out when I took those covers off. I took a blow dryer and started warming them up, and I had mom put towels soaked in hot water on the other pipes. I had no idea how long it might take, so I was very happy when the first faucet thawed after some 15 minutes. It actually got me by surprise so I got water all over bottom part of my pants. It froze on me within minutes. The other two took about the same. I then just wrapped them in some rags and left them dripping.

The fourth faucet, coming out of the unheated garage, was not thawing. My next door neighbour came out, and when he saw what I was doing started doing the same with his frozen pipes. When he was done he came over to help with his super strong heat gun for melting paint. We would heat the faucet to where it was too hot to touch, but could barely get few drops of water out. And we were freezing, too. We went inside 3-4 times to warm up and allow the heat to transfer through the metal to the inside part of the pipe that was apparently still frozen. We even started heating the sheet-rock from inside the garage, because we were sure no ice could still be in the super hot outside part of the pipe. After almost 3 hours, we finally got it all thawed. I left the pipes drip for the next couple of days until the temperatures finally went above freezing.

Frozen pipes is not something we have to worry about in Texas very often. We don't get temperatures bellow freezing for more than a few hours. Or we are not supposed to, anyway. From posts of facebook, it seems that a lot of people had trouble with leaking or burst pipes with this arctic blast. My other neighbour had a huge blob of ice that same evening under one of his (covered) outside faucets. I am so thankful Norma warned me to check on the pipes before it was too late, and that my neighbour came to help with his special tool.