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2020-21 Winter weather; bring it on


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Gotta give a shout out to State Rep Hugh Shine's office (Bell County).  He used his office to coordinate with Oncor to get power on for folks in the district.  Yesterday a FB post instructed people with prolonged outages to contact his office rather than call or message Oncor, which was jammed with messages.  My mom messaged his office, and my dad called his office and talked to Hugh himself about their outage (out for well over 100 hours).  An hour later, power was restored for the all the customers along their rural road.  Oncor had been reporting that their power was restored 3 days before when obviously it hadn't been.  I thought that was a refreshing story of an elected official using his office to lend a hand to his constituents in this mess. 

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I get lost on which thread I’ve posted in, but the house seems to have survived ok due to a mix of prep, design and luck.  Snow is disappearing so fast it almost feels like it was just a bad dream.  
 

The comment on the mental load of this thing is spot on...I didn’t really start to relax until Thursday and was constantly checking things inside and out, trying to prop up trees with scrap wood, or taking my kids outside so they could experience real snow.  I didn’t have a drink until Wednesday, wanted to stay on top in case I had to make a move suddenly.  
 

I’m exhausted where’s it seems my wife was mostly bored on the couch the whole time.  I’m also ready to get everyone out of the house and have a little solitude without having to do dishes ten times a day...though it seems to schools and daycare may not open so this could last awhile   

but grateful our house survived and my family is ok.  

Edited by Homercles
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On 2/13/2021 at 10:15 AM, Wanker Bob said:

I don't see any way to keep these fuckers from freezing. Last night I found two covers at the store when looking for pool noodles and also got some rubber pipe insulation. Went out freezing my ass off and rewrapped them this time with the rubber insulation then covered with the new covers then wrapped that and duct taped it all sealed. That shit is still gonna freeze. I wonder if we should open the valve just a bit to relieve pressure and when it thaws the water has somewhere to go. 

 

One week later and all that shit worked. During the 26 straight hours of no electricity my upstairs master bathroom sink lines froze since they're on the north side but by opening up the faucet it reduced the pressure enough to save the pipe when it began to thaw and flow again on Wednesday. That was a crazy stressful week. 

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23 minutes ago, Wanker Bob said:

One week later and all that shit worked. During the 26 straight hours of no electricity my upstairs master bathroom sink lines froze since they're on the north side but by opening up the faucet it reduced the pressure enough to save the pipe when it began to thaw and flow again on Wednesday. That was a crazy stressful week. 

Yeah I'm somewhat amazed and impressed with my house and consider myself very fortunate.  We got below zero in my neck of the woods and the added insulation, blankets over pipes, spaceheaters pointed at the walls during periods of power, the insulation on the outside spigots, and dripping water almost continuously for 5 days worked.

But people can be complete assholes - was walking in my neighborhood a while ago and saw water gushing out of the sprinkler backflow preventer in the yard of a house down the street.  Wasn't sure anyone was home so I walked over to turn off the valve when the owner comes out and yells "leave it alone!"  I said "you gonna fix that?" And he just said "leave it alone!" again.  I said "Ok if you want a $1000 water bill that's on you" but called the city anyway.  

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36 minutes ago, F250 said:

I was Team Stream, no damage to report. 

Not sure if anyone was keeping count but did there appear to be any benefit of stream vs drip or vice versa?

 

I dripped/streamed and came out unscathed. May have a lot to do with luck, smaller home size, and not losing power but is what it is. Some neighbors weren’t as lucky. 

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SIAP. Water off for 3 days. Then low pressure for 1 day. Now about 2/3 pressure for 12 hours. Water heater pilot light on and heater flame comes on occasionally  , but water never gets as hot as before event. i'd sure like to get a shower. Any thoughts? I know it will take time to heat but it's been 12 hours. 

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So 106 pages (28 pages in the other thread) of drip the faucets or don't drip the faucets....cut the water of or don't cut the water off.....put heat source on interior wall opposite faucets or don't put heat source.....single wrap, double wrap....even triple wrap faucets....after 83 hours of no heat, not cutting water off, not dripping faucets all I did was put one  the these on my 2 (1 on north side of house other outside garage wall east side of house) and I have no runs, no drips, no errors....

859801000029.jpg

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2 hours ago, Captainant said:

Team #nodrip checking in... I took the plastic bag, dish towel, and pool noodle off my spigots today, turned em, and had a free flowing stream of water with no interior or exterior drips. 

Fuck yeah. Shout out to @UTPhil2006 for selling me a kickass house

Time to refi said house 😉

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So 106 pages (28 pages in the other thread) of drip the faucets or don't drip the faucets....cut the water of or don't cut the water off.....put heat source on interior wall opposite faucets or don't put heat source.....single wrap, double wrap....even triple wrap faucets....after 83 hours of no heat, not cutting water off, not dripping faucets all I did was put one  the these on my 2 (1 on north side of house other outside garage wall east side of house) and I have no runs, no drips, no errors....
859801000029.jpg.9d44687638d8e027706a0abe6ec17540.jpg

Yeah I started with those and all four of my hose bibs froze last weekend. They don’t work for 0 or 4 degrees, My new strategy is if it’s less than 20, I’m streaming.
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2 hours ago, Hpara759 said:

So 106 pages (28 pages in the other thread) of drip the faucets or don't drip the faucets....cut the water of or don't cut the water off.....put heat source on interior wall opposite faucets or don't put heat source.....single wrap, double wrap....even triple wrap faucets....after 83 hours of no heat, not cutting water off, not dripping faucets all I did was put one  the these on my 2 (1 on north side of house other outside garage wall east side of house) and I have no runs, no drips, no errors....

859801000029.jpg

I  ordered some of these.  Just got here.

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12 hours ago, phdhorn said:

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.

I'm really curious as to why that is.  It may be nothing more than it's Oncor's home city and got smart meters and maybe related consumer grid technology that made it easier to roll.

From what I am gathering, plenty of places in Dallas were off, but it was a very intentional off and they came back on as soon as feasible.  Whereas I think Austin and Houston had some real problems cutting areas off and on and places were off because they couldn't be cut back on not for load reasons, but for other technical reasons.

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21 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.

I saw some of that in a parking lot at a Walgreens today.  

Water does have a habit of permeating asphalt and freezing and it is the main thing that causes asphalt to deteriorate.  Could be that or a broken line leaking slowly.

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2 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

Team no drip with another point 

Pool noodle, wrapped with towel, wrapped with trash bag secured by bungee cord and duct tape.

slapped this on top of it all

 

 

(no that exposed pipe isn’t connected to anything)

 

821D4D5D-B10E-4711-ADE6-996DC966DB7B.jpeg

I did something pretty similar with a bucket. Also used a pool noodle and cloth wrapped. Streaming faucets.

 

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4 hours ago, Not that Bob said:

i'd sure like to get a shower. Any thoughts?

@Nicole44 has been taking a whore's bath every now and then, and so I'm going to try and take a pimp's shower.  Water sports may or may not be involved, but I'm not going to freak out if that's the case, because I could win a Robin Williams in Jumanji look alike contest right about now.

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Georgetown sounds like a clusterfuck right now.   A bunch of folks without power, that has nothing to do with the rolling blackouts.  And more people are talking about the water.

Still can't confirm tower - have friends near there, waiting to hear back.

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

@Nicole44 has been taking a whore's bath every now and then, and so I'm going to try and take a pimp's shower.  Water sports may or may not be involved, but I'm not going to freak out if that's the case, because I could win a Robin Williams in Jumanji look alike contest right about now.

This isn't NSAA, bro.

 

 

LOL

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