2020-21 Winter weather; bring it on

[South Austin 52037]

2 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

The contractor that worked on this house (improvements and such) popped by out of the blue yesterday just to check on things and cut the water to the street since I didn’t have the right tools. And checked over everything and then came back with a giant Ozarka bottle and a heater and tent to put next to the insulated outdoor pipe. It’s pex stuff so what happened was it froze from the street to the house. He’s awesome. Looks like Noah —as in Ark. he was going around yesterday and today out of the goodness of his heart checking on everyone he knows since he has a big truck the last three days and making sure everyone was ok and checking their pipes and electricity. While he was at our house he found out that his BIL who was in the hospital for Covid was being removed from the ventilator because he had a massive stroke and isn’t expected to live beyond tonite. Still he was helping over here and other places.

if anyone here needs help I am sure when he gets back from the funeral he would be happy to help anyone. Pm me if someone does need some help. 

Looks like your contractor wants to get laid.

[Okie State 3775]

5 minutes? Took me two hours to drain the water heater. 

I didn't drain the water heater. Didn't feel like that was necessary.

[BradInATX 9208]

More than a few of my neighbors threw one of those foam covers on their spigots and called it a day.

Not a single one of those neighbors had a busted pipe. Sweatergawd.

[Anastasis 23375]

3 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

5 minutes? Took me two hours to drain the water heater. 

That's the only thing that I didn't do.  I didn't drain my water heaters. We'll see in the morning if there are any ramifications to that. 

[atomheartbevo 89362]

1 minute ago, Okie State said:

It's funny reading all the stories about weirdos like me who stay up at night worrying about this shit and checking everything a thousand times. More than a few of my neighbors threw one of those foam covers on their spigots and called it a day.

Also I'll admit I wasn't worried at all about this storm a week ago since I've been through much colder growing up in Oklahoma. That was before I realized our entire power grid was on the brink of collapse.

I lived up north when I was a kid (sub-zero temps for large chunks of time), lived in western Oklahoma when I was a kid (plenty of snow and below-freezing temps), and I worry more precisely because I've seen good/better construction up there, and I've seen what we have down here in Austin.

I have this thing about figuring out a chain-of-events in my head and what can go round.  Living in a duplex-style situation where another neighbor can impact you makes it worse, since I make sure and check their outside stuff as well.

I would love to sometimes be able to throw a foam cover on a spigot and call it a day, but then I run through in my head what can go wrong, how much of a pain in the ass it will be, and how much it will cost to fix (if I can get it fixed in a timely manner), and I also run down what I'd have to do to fix it.

[Nicole44 22023]

2 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Looks like your contractor wants to get laid.

He’s just a cool dude. Guy just had two stints inserted into his wrist last week and was running around (he’s in his late 60’s with white hair and white beard) helping people this week. Incredible guy. 

[atomheartbevo 89362]

4 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Looks like your contractor wants to get laid.

Or he cut some corners and is concerned it will come back to bite him in the ass.

 

[atomheartbevo 89362]

Saw this on Nextdoor.  This could explain the neighbors closer to 45th (albeit we are west of the Hyder Parkers) having their water pressure drop.

Water bubbles in asphalt 😕. Water is currently bubbling through asphalt on our street in about 5 places (Ave D and 45th). 311 is too busy to help...thoughts?

Edited February 20, 2021 by atomheartbevo

[BradInATX 9208]

Lol c'mon y'all damn

[South Austin 52037]

Just now, atomheartbevo said:

Or he cut some corners and is concerned it will come back to bite him in the ass.

 

Killing two birds with one stone.

[Okie State 3775]

I lived up north when I was a kid (sub-zero temps for large chunks of time), lived in western Oklahoma when I was a kid (plenty of snow and below-freezing temps), and I worry more precisely because I've seen good/better construction up there, and I've seen what we have down here in Austin.
I have this thing about figuring out a chain-of-events in my head and what can go round.  Living in a duplex-style situation where another neighbor can impact you makes it worse, since I make sure and check their outside stuff as well.
I would love to sometimes be able to throw a foam cover on a spigot and call it a day, but then I run through in my head what can go wrong, how much of a pain in the ass it will be, and how much it will cost to fix (if I can get it fixed in a timely manner), and I also run down what I'd have to do to fix it.

Yup. It's the running scenarios that most people don't do. They just kinda go with the flow and hope for the best. Usually works out for them too.

[atomheartbevo 89362]

2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Saw this on Nextdoor.  This could explain the neighbors closer to 45th (albeit we are west of the Hyder Parkers) having their water pressure drop.

Water bubbles in asphalt 😕. Water is currently bubbling through asphalt on our street in about 5 places (Ave D and 45th). 311 is too busy to help...thoughts?

For those of you with Nextdoor, if you are in a surrounding neighborhood, he's got video.  Water is bubbling up in various places under the asphalt.  That dude needs to stop walking around on it taking video.

[burntorangebongos 10681]

Is it going to be a sinkhole?

[Deej 76510]

Nicole's contractor...

[TwiceHorn 31184]

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

It just hasn’t gotten that cold in the 9 yrs we’ve been in this house. Down to the high teens maybe twice? The garage etc kept enough residual heat in those short cold snaps so nothing bad happened, I guess.

139 hours straight below freezing in Dallas, I think it was a bit worse in Austin.  I've never seen anything remotely like that in a half century.  And certainly not overnight temps in the single digits on 3-4 nights.  

The temperature differential makes all the difference.  The bigger it is, the faster things freeze.

[Gatorubet 30064]

We’re up to leak #5.

Turns out our house has a metric shitton of uninsulated copper pipe on outside walls or exposed to the elements (under some decking).

Mother fucker. When we’re done with the pipe repairs, we’re gonna insulate and/or heat tape all of it before next winter.

Sell the metric shitton of copper to pay for God’s PVC. Profit!

I mean, Cancun Ritz stayin’ type money!

Amirite?!!

[Biff Tannen 45477]

55 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Saw this on Nextdoor.  This could explain the neighbors closer to 45th (albeit we are west of the Hyder Parkers) having their water pressure drop.

Water bubbles in asphalt 😕. Water is currently bubbling through asphalt on our street in about 5 places (Ave D and 45th). 311 is too busy to help...thoughts?

Great. That’s probably a mile away from me. Back you devil!  Back!

[Biff Tannen 45477]

1 hour ago, BradInATX said:

 

 

Not a single one of those neighbors had a busted pipe. Sweatergawd.

 

Shit. My next door neighbor didn’t even have a cover. Just left the bib hanging out in the open the whole time. Not a drip. 
 

Saw her this morning and she’s like “yeah, I grew up in New England, so I’m used to it.”

95% sure she didn’t drain her lines. Who knows. 

[Sbbruin 21697]

41 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

139 hours straight below freezing in Dallas, I think it was a bit worse in Austin.  I've never seen anything remotely like that in a half century.  And certainly not overnight temps in the single digits on 3-4 nights.  

The temperature differential makes all the difference.  The bigger it is, the faster things freeze.

That’s nuts.  I had no idea temps could get single digits in Austin.  When I think of Austin, I think of sweating my balls off in DKR.

[NorthLoop 14071]

4 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Shit. My next door neighbor didn’t even have a cover. Just left the bib hanging out in the open the whole time. Not a drip. 
 

Saw her this morning and she’s like “yeah, I grew up in New England, so I’m used to it.”

95% sure she didn’t drain her lines. Who knows. 

one of my neighbors a few houses down had their hose hooked up the whole time to the faucet on their garage wall... the garage that they kept open almost all week. 

[F250 28659]

32 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

That’s nuts.  I had no idea temps could get single digits in Austin.  When I think of Austin, I think of sweating my balls off in DKR.

Well yeah that's Texas football.

I've never in my entire life experienced anything like this in Texas. Sure I've experienced colder weather out of state but this shit was surreal. Come to think of it everything for the past 12 months has been surreal.

Today I heard the city update called the Covid Pandemic and Energy/water winter crisis update.

 

[Orange&White 5516]

3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

It's not the building, it's your idiot neighbor whose cybermining operating is set to restart automatically as soon as the power is on.

 

[tx 3 putt 76159]

2 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

The contractor that worked on this house (improvements and such) popped by out of the blue yesterday just to check on things and cut the water to the street since I didn’t have the right tools. And checked over everything and then came back with a giant Ozarka bottle and a heater and tent to put next to the insulated outdoor pipe. It’s pex stuff so what happened was it froze from the street to the house. He’s awesome. Looks like Noah —as in Ark. he was going around yesterday and today out of the goodness of his heart checking on everyone he knows since he has a big truck the last three days and making sure everyone was ok and checking their pipes and electricity. While he was at our house he found out that his BIL who was in the hospital for Covid was being removed from the ventilator because he had a massive stroke and isn’t expected to live beyond tonite. Still he was helping over here and other places.

if anyone here needs help I am sure when he gets back from the funeral he would be happy to help anyone. Pm me if someone does need some help. 

 

push up bra and low cut tank top, tight shorts <<<<< the next time he comes over and you want to drive down his price !!!

[gsoda3 3234]

2 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

He’s just a cool dude. Guy just had two stints inserted into his wrist last week and was running around (he’s in his late 60’s with white hair and white beard) helping people this week. Incredible guy. 

are his initials TL?

[TonyTexas 10478]

On the bright side, mosquitos shouldn’t be as bad this summer. 

[HouTex 1847]

I did this but I didn't know how to drain the water heater and that bitch is sitting up in the attic. I guess I'm glad I freaked out when the upstairs sink shut down and the hot water heater stopped making hot water and opened all my faucets, filled my tub and shut the water off. Maybe it was the best call all things considered. The water heater is fine and working okay. But since I don't know jack about them, I had a plumber come and turn on my shit so he could make sure the water heater was okay and no pipe leaks. Paid him just one hour for his time which I would have paid double since the peace of mind and hand holding was awesome after being so worried through most of this ordeal about my house. I felt I had no control and so ignorant about best practices except for the info that I found here and on some plumbing sites. But bottom line is that I don't want to be responsible for a house in extreme cold weather conditions.  It sucks.

I have a tankless water heater in the attic so after I turned off the water into the house I just turned on several hot and cold water spigots around the house until they ran dry.

[burntorangebongos 10681]

How can you tell if you have tankless? See I don't even know that. It is a Bradford White and I can re-light the pilot if it goes out...that is all I know about it. I accidently did good by opening every single faucet in the house. But I had no clue about draining the water heater or what to do so I treated it like a rattle snake and left it alone. That is why I feel so lucky it worked out and I didn't damage it. 

[LABEVO 928]

38 minutes ago, burntorangebongos said:

How can you tell if you have tankless? See I don't even know that. It is a Bradford White and I can re-light the pilot if it goes out...that is all I know about it. I accidently did good by opening every single faucet in the house. But I had no clue about draining the water heater or what to do so I treated it like a rattle snake and left it alone. That is why I feel so lucky it worked out and I didn't damage it. 

[HenryJames 65868]

7 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

No more whore’s baths for me! I hope. 

[South Austin 52037]

2 hours ago, HenryJames said:

Be nice.

[phdhorn 6224]

8 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

That’s nuts.  I had no idea temps could get single digits in Austin.  When I think of Austin, I think of sweating my balls off falling asleep in DKR.

Fixed.  Hopefully this year unfixed.

[phdhorn 6224]

8 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

139 hours straight below freezing in Dallas, I think it was a bit worse in Austin.  I've never seen anything remotely like that in a half century.  And certainly not overnight temps in the single digits on 3-4 nights.  

The temperature differential makes all the difference.  The bigger it is, the faster things freeze.

Granted, DFW in this = the winner of the Rosie O'Donnell Lookalike Contest, but they handled things very, very well up there compared to the other third world outposts in the state, especially Bib-Al-Austin and Houstonistan.

[South Austin 52037]

I’ve never been so happy to get a Houndstooth coffee.

[ChickenSandwich 9797]

https://www.kvue.com/mobile/article/life/heartwarming/austin-delivery-driver-stuck-at-customers-house/269-e3ef5eb3-91b1-4711-9b17-b10b3c6ed9ac
 

Chelsea Timmons was trying to finish up her shift delivering groceries. Instead, she became a temporary roommate

 

good stuff

[Nicole44 22023]

7 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

push up bra and low cut tank top, tight shorts <<<<< the next time he comes over and you want to drive down his price !!!

I see. This works? 

6 hours ago, gsoda3 said:

are his initials TL?

No. His name is Brad. 

[Chet Steadman 940]

What was the official number of hours we were under freezing?  

I know we surpassed the record of 140.  

[phdhorn 6224]

44 minutes ago, Chet Steadman said:

What was the official number of hours we were under freezing?  

I know we surpassed the record of 140.  

144 in Austin, passed about 11 a.m. on Wednesday.  Ended about 3 p.m. Wednesday.
This is Mabry's reading.

Yay.

[Eastwood 4394]

This storm has been horrible on peace of mind. As we thaw out, the house is making all kinds of pops and creaks. To ease some of the minds out there, I had a knocking sound in the floor every time I ran the hot water in a specific sink this morning and yesterday morning. Run the cold in the same sink, nothing. Check the meter, no spin, so no leaks, even after the thaw yesterday. Asked my plumber buddy about it. Thermal expansion. Those drain pipes are along the outside wall and cold as hell. When the hot water runs through them, they undergo thermal expansion and make the knocking sound that echos all the way up the pipe. So anyone out there that hears the knocking sound only when they run hot water at a specific sink, keep monitoring it, but it could be thermal expansion and nothing more. It will go away when the temps normalize.

[Armybrat 40678]

10 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

For those of you with Nextdoor, if you are in a surrounding neighborhood, he's got video.  Water is bubbling up in various places under the asphalt.  That dude needs to stop walking around on it taking video.

A good friend in London (UK, not Texas) had a warehouse full of hardware stock behind his office. One day his son went out to grab a couple of items, but heard a weird rushing noise from the back corner of the building. He went back to investigate, then the floor felt like it was moving. So he retreated and fetched his dad out of the office in time to see the entire back third of the warehouse collapse into what proved to be 10 meter deep sinkhole with a river rushing through it like rapids.

Not only did he lose a significant amount of his inventory, but also a 1950s-1960s vintage jukebox that he had restored for his game room under construction at his French farmhouse. I had given him about 20 of our vinyl 45 rpm R&R records from the 1950s to load into it. All swept away in the blink of an eye by the huge broken water pipe that washed out a 20 meter diameter sinkhole.

But the thought that his 19 year old son was damn near seconds from death standing on top of that doomed floor with his body never to be recovered (like the jukebox) really shook them up. 

[Red Five 40593]

Still no water in 78749.

[Surly Bevo 24692]

Granted, DFW in this = the winner of the Rosie O'Donnell Lookalike Contest, but they handled things very, very well up there compared to the other third world outposts in the state, especially Bib-Al-Austin and Houstonistan.

Did go better here. For instance I was without power for 31 hours straight which seems crazy until you look at the numbers from other parts of the state.

Then again of all the least prepared Texans DFW is probably the tallest midget just because we do get colder a bit more often than others.

[Brisketexan 104465]

Sell the metric shitton of copper to pay for God’s PVC. Profit!

I mean, Cancun Ritz stayin’ type money!

Amirite?!!

I thought that the proceeds of sale of scrap copper could only be used to procure meth?

I really don’t have time to get into meth. Maybe I could just knock out some of my teeth to accomplish the look?

[ztejas 43244]

8 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

Did go better here. For instance I was without power for 31 hours straight which seems crazy until you look at the numbers from other parts of the state.

Then again of all the least prepared Texans DFW is probably the tallest midget just because we do get colder a bit more often than others.

DFW generally has it's shit together the best I feel like. People have real jobs (not that there's anything wrong with being a hippy), the roads work, the city politics aren't a disaster. One of the reasons I enjoyed living there. 

[Surly Bevo 24692]

Just now, ztejas said:

DFW generally has it's shit together the best I feel like. People have real jobs (not that there's anything wrong with being a hippy), the roads work, the city politics aren't a disaster. One of the reasons I enjoyed living there. 

True, in the minus and almost forgotten in all of this is we did kill a bunch of people 9 days ago because the toll authority couldn't treat roads properly so I won't suck any local government/public works dicks too hard. 

[ztejas 43244]

Just now, Surly Bevo said:

True, in the minus and almost forgotten in all of this is we did kill a bunch of people 9 days ago because the toll authority couldn't treat roads properly so I won't suck any local government/public works dicks too hard. 

Isn't that a private company? Maybe subsidized to some degree? But yeah - toll roads suck in general. 

[burntorangebongos 10681]

I left my sprinklers alone. I didn't even cut them off at the underground shutoff. I'll bet they are fucked but I don't care. My house is (knock on wood) doing fine. 

I wonder if you ignore things like leaving a hose on an outside faucet and give no fucks, you confuse karma into fucking your overly prepared neighbor. 

[ztejas 43244]

45 minutes ago, Eastwood said:

It will go away when the temps normalize.

Sure it will... 

[Hate 20102]

On 2/18/2021 at 3:32 PM, Hate said:

You’re doing better than I am. I can’t get a plumber to come. Two days in a row one was supposed to come by but I never heard from them. They won’t even answer their phone anymore. My BIL is coming in from Louisiana. The stores here are all out of pvc and any piping you might need anyway. He has all of the tools we will need to fix it. I just hope no other leaks spring up when we turn the water back on. A friend of our had 7 pipes burst.

BIL showed up Friday afternoon.  We got the leak fixed, ripped out the carpet, and removed all of the wet sheet rock.  It may finally warm up enough for me to attempt to turn on the pool.  I'll try that later today when it has been "warm" for a while.  I'm just glad to be washing dishes and clothes finally.  I hope every once else returns to "normal" as quickly as possible.

[Machinator 32097]

 

[Machinator 32097]