"plumbers and heating companies are watching the weather report and preparing for a busy week of weather-related repairs." http://kplr11.com/2014/01/06/plumbers-seeing-increase-in-calls-over-frozen-water-pipes/ some prep tips for the winter cold : http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140107/NEWS/401070326
No surprise there Dave.. Just ran the upstairs heat zone a few minutes to be avoid freezing the heat pipes again! May not be so lucky next time and burst a pipe.. The ThermGuard will give peace of mind for sure..Howling winds and 10 here right now and probably will go below zero again tonight.. Ray
"You can't fix stupid." Yeah... Seeing a plumber quoted saying that really makes me want to pay the guy a couple hundred/thousand bucks to do my plumbing work knowing that the only reason I had to call him was because I'm stupid.... Now where's my wife and her t-shirt?
Takes all kinds. probably not a good people person. LOL Read that too, maybe I should've linked a different article, many articles out there discussing plumbers . Big money time , the guy should be happy. Maybe he's just tired & overwhelmed with all work.
Down here n south were not use to it. Plumbers here are going non stop. Heard an NPR story out of the ATL about it. We have uninsulated crawls and pipes. I have two spickets frozen solid since yesterday afternoon. Don't think they will bust but??? We did not get above freezing today. Were not use to it. My old part of hose has r19 in the ceiling that's it for insulation. I normally have just the stove to heat the far side to no less than 65f in house. Last night we we're about 9F and the heat pump ran about nonstop from about 1am till 9am ( i usually dont have the heat kick on at all!! )heat left faster than the stove could put it in there.
In the past two week there have been two reports of house fires up this way from blowtorch-thawing of pipes.
Any extra insulation also helps keep the cold in, in the summer. I would think 6" walls, good double paned windows & good ceiling insulation would be great energy savings anywhere, summer & winter.
They are but that takes cash!! Cash that this 31 yr old do sent have to invest in a 60 yr old home that was not built to year 2000 code!! Like y'all up there in the cold I can handle heat better. 80F in the house in summer is cool I'm fine. I can work on my stuff at 100F in 20F I'm going inside!!!
I mean I still will go out t shirt or bare feet or a boxers and skip on boots in similar but I don't go hang out like that. I have enough heat I'n my body to last 5-10 mins but extended periods I get frozen hand if wrenching. If I can dress and move about its different
Yea Took a few years to get the house insulated & sealed better for here. Builders build & sell, not live in them. Got some tax credits, & some state rebates, it all helped. Few more things need done, time, work & money Then the maintenance to keep things sealed, I need 3 new door seals on he bottom of the exterior doors. Looking at it from the good side, the air leaks help the draft on the stove. Storm doors would be nice too.
I got to play plumber today, only took a blow drier fortunately. Same thing happened about 15 years ago so I knew exactly where to poke a hole in the Sheetrock. The previous owner of my house put in a slider where there was a window. Right next to it is the water pipes that feed the kitchen sink. They messed up the insulation and sheathing. I thought I had fixed it back then but the winds last night got it. The thing that sucks it I first tried heating the wall but after a half hour the pipe was still froze so I poked the hole. Took less than 5 seconds to clear the pipe after that. So now I need to fix the wall. But I need to work on hey he air leakage anyway.....
I mentioned in another thread that my brother and I had to fix some boiler pipes for a guy he used to work with. He turned down the zones (or off), then left to stay with his GF for a couple/few days. When he came back, 2 of the upstairs baseboards had popped, and the shower valve up there had also popped a couple pipes (they were solder starved anyway). We replaced the 2 baseboards (cheaper than fixing) and once we turned the zones on, found another right next to the front door that was pouring straight water of of a nice 1" long split. I fixed that one while he was sweating the shower pipes. We need to do some repiping on the boiler to facilitate adding water (auto fill), and flushing. We've been in this guys place before and my brother warned him about some of this. DOH!
I've cut & spliced copper pipes that split do to power failure & freezing. Used air to find most of the leaks. But water is easier to find, walk around in sock feet
I was curious how he didn't know about the one next to the door. Water was pouring out of that one and he made no mention of it. We found it though. Easily.
