Texas deep freeze carnage thread

[TwiceHorn 31,537]

Well outside spigots still a drippin so thank God for that. 

Power off for 10 hours now. 

[FondrenRoad 4,378]

16 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

The temperature differential.  Even though AC consumes more power per degree, the difference is almost double. 

Aren't the power plants themselves having issues with the cold?

[Samson's Wig 3,194]

3 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Yes

It looks like east of the tracks has power on (that's where my buddy is) and west of the tracks is fucked.  I'm sorry, man.

[Samson's Wig 3,194]

14 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

If you are using natural gas to heat then you are using a minimal amount of electricity regardless of the temperature differential 

Exactly.  And most in Texas have GFA, right?

[Armybrat 40,914]

Son in Hutto lost power at 5am yesterday. Came on for one hour late afternoon, then went off. I told him to drive over here (west side of Round Rock) if they (gf & 2 yappy dogs) got too cold.

[Skipper 6,202]

Ran all faucets/showers at night and everything works but no water to upstairs bathroom toilet after I tried to flush.    Is there anything that can be done other than try a hair dryer on wall?  Unfortunately it's in a spot I can't really tell path of piping.

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

Team No Drip reporting in. Got down to six or seven degrees but as we are rolling blackouts, we had heat for part of the night. Casualty this far is one toilet line on north wall where I only put one bag of leaves instead of two. Placed husband’s shop light near the wall and seems to be doing the trick. We have a second bathroom (the kids) so whew regardless.

During the brief moment of power this morning-half an hour, we got coffee and I made a hot breakfast and then everyone trooped  out and we got the driveway cleared so good ole Sol can get to work and dry it out in time for the next shitshow on Wednesday. 
 

As we figured from our experiences north, the cars packed the snow which created icy tracks and so it is now worse in the streets. If plows were around, they could have that scraped and dry by sundown but Texas- not possible given the budgets for winter this far south. 

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

5 minutes ago, Skipper said:

Ran all faucets/showers at night and everything works but no water to upstairs bathroom toilet after I tried to flush.    Is there anything that can be done other than try a hair dryer on wall?  Unfortunately it's in a spot I can't really tell path of piping.

We have a single story and one toilet was our only issue and that’s what we did with the shop light instead of a hair dryer. Yours being two story may be more complicated but some heat in the area may help. 

[Parliament 14,310]

Really stupid question here probably but we had a hot water pipe burst behind downstairs bathroom sink wall. Turned off water from hot water heater and cleaned up water that ran out of wall. If I turn hot water back on and try to use hot water in another part of house, will that burst portion on other side of house leak again even if we're not pulling hot water from that bathroom? We're lucky, cold water is fine so can flush toilets, etc

If I understand the question, yes. You're fooked. I guess you could cut the line above rhe break and glue a cap on it.

[utbone04 15]

4 hours ago, slorch said:

Yeah the penguins are drawing on that Antarctic power grid something fierce.

And we don't disagree with having a better plan/ less bureaucracy  involved...

The power output in Antarctica is obviously not as much as Texas, but that's not what we are talking about. Way to move the goalpost on your original argument that wind turbines don't work because they freeze up. I simply pointed out that the liberal pot-head smoking "green" power technology of wind turbines that you obviously hate and trying to blame for the current power situation can work just fine in sub-zero temperatures.

[HornOnTheBayou 8,946]

29 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

It looks like east of the tracks has power on (that's where my buddy is) and west of the tracks is fucked.  I'm sorry, man.

I'm in the neighborhood east of the tracks. It's about 50/50 here right now. The odd part is that the area of the neighborhood closer to Mopac and the hospital is the area with more outages.

Edited February 16, 2021 by HornOnTheBayou

[Skipper 6,202]

8 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

We have a single story and one toilet was our only issue and that’s what we did with the shop light instead of a hair dryer. Yours being two story may be more complicated but some heat in the area may help. 

Yeah, we have a downstairs bathroom directly below that also has a sink and shower.  Toilet, shower, faucet work downstairs.  Shower and faucets work upstairs.  Hot and cold for each.   So just this toilet line somewhere that must have frozen.

[Foosters 17,889]

28 minutes ago, Skipper said:

Ran all faucets/showers at night and everything works but no water to upstairs bathroom toilet after I tried to flush.    Is there anything that can be done other than try a hair dryer on wall?  Unfortunately it's in a spot I can't really tell path of piping.

[Jameslaw121 4,448]

Haven't started my truck (Dodge Durango 2003) since Saturday. It was outside the whole time. Ran up to work (about 2 miles away) and it started leaking oil. Guessing a bad seal?

[GringoSalado 1,652]

1 hour ago, TonyTexas said:

Someone explain to me how cold weather electricity usage even approaches mid summer usage. At least half of Texas residences use gas for heat whereas close to 100% use electricity for air conditioning. 

I don't think it does, it seems the issue is that the cold snap just resulted in much more than expected demand. Or maybe not but hey

 

According to this they were surprised by demand to the tune of almost 10MW then lost a bunch of nat gas (and some wind?) gen cap on top of that

[Bartles 769]

Do we have any east Texas check-ins? Are people inching over to Shreveport where it seems like hotels are normal? Or are the roads just impossible?

I'm getting an early days of Katrina vibe, like we know this is bad but the specifics won't be revealed for a couple days at least. It's pretty terrifying.

[Stinkpalm 689]

4 hours ago, ZB'Tejas said:

My backup power on my pool finally gave out and stopped therefore pool froze overnight. Anyone trying anything to help that? Break up the ice or just wait it out?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ours has been running nonstop (haven’t lost power yet, thankfully), but still had a nice sheet of ice on top. Told my wife I’d break it up a bit later today. Went upstairs for my morning constitutional, and started hearing a constant banging sound from outside. Peaked out the window to see my pregnant bride whacking away at the ice with a pry bar. Haha. Ours still had pockets of water, so I don’t think it placed any strain on the tiles, but I’d imagine it’d help in your case, especially since it isn’t running. Couldn’t hurt, at the very least.

[TheStoicPaisano 9,939]

43 minutes ago, Foosters said:

 

[dcar00 14,367]

18 hours no power. This after the 33 hour thurs fri outage due to Austin energy fuckup.

I'm absolutely getting a gas range after this.

Glad to have the gas fireplace and grill.

[bernorange 8,365]

Damn.  Hope you peeps without power/water/heat manage and stay safe.  I seem to be lucky so far.  

[Post Oak 20,276]

33 minutes ago, GringoSalado said:

I don't think it does, it seems the issue is that the cold snap just resulted in much more than expected demand. Or maybe not but hey

 

According to this they were surprised by demand to the tune of almost 10MW then lost a bunch of nat gas (and some wind?) gen cap on top of that

Fuck it. Put HEB in charge of ERCOT and be done with it .

[Continental Op 3,934]

1 hour ago, utbone04 said:

The power output in Antarctica is obviously not as much as Texas, but that's not what we are talking about. Way to move the goalpost on your original argument that wind turbines don't work because they freeze up. I simply pointed out that the liberal pot-head smoking "green" power technology of wind turbines that you obviously hate and trying to blame for the current power situation can work just fine in sub-zero temperatures.

Don't waste your time trying to reason with him.  Just point and laugh. 

[Dahobbs 17,682]

4 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

Fuck it. Put HEB in charge of ERCOT and be done with it .

All hail our HEB overlords. Seriously. 

[dcar00 14,367]

32 minutes ago, GringoSalado said:

I don't think it does, it seems the issue is that the cold snap just resulted in much more than expected demand. Or maybe not but hey

 

According to this they were surprised by demand to the tune of almost 10MW then lost a bunch of nat gas (and some wind?) gen cap on top of that

What do you bet they havent adjusted extreme peak load for the influx the last 3 to 4 years. 

[Pancho 44,996]

Having an issue with just 1 toilet that is on an outside wall.  It won't refill. The other toilet (is on an inside wall) does refill.  I don't have a hair dryer (blek), so what other options are there? 

 

Sidenote--just slipped and fell on my own property and I will be suing myself. 

[Blotto 23,579]

2 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Having an issue with just 1 toilet that is on an outside wall.  It won't refill. The other toilet (is on an inside wall) does refill.  I don't have a hair dryer (blek), so what other options are there? 

 

Sidenote--just slipped and fell on my own property and I will be suing myself. 

Have you considered gorilla glue hairspray?

[Sbbruin 21,891]

Those of you with toilet issues, just waffle stomp your shit in the shower and pour a bucket of hot water heated on the stove down the drain.  Problem solved.

[Telegraph_it 3,359]

HEB uses enchanted rock generators, which run on natural gas, as back up. Apparently their instruments work and they can function in extreme temperatures. Novel concept. 

[dcar00 14,367]

I'd be fine with rolling blackouts for a week. If they really were rolling a couple hours at a time.

[Dahobbs 17,682]

Just now, dcar00 said:

I'd be fine with rolling blackouts for a week. If they really were rolling a couple hours at a time.

This. Rolling is fine. It is predictable. And you can have confidence you will get power. Over 24 hours without power in this weather is fucking unacceptable. 

[dcar00 14,367]

Just now, Dahobbs said:

This. Rolling is fine. It is predictable. And you can have confidence you will get power. Over 24 hours without power in this weather is fucking unacceptable. 

Agreed. The rolling blackouts was obviously a canard. They never existed or understood how to do them. My guess is none of these idiots ever said - how do we do rolling blackouts in the winter? It's like they believed it would never be cold again like in 1983.

[TexArcher 38,069]

6 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

I'd be fine with rolling blackouts for a week. If they really were rolling a couple hours at a time.

Yeah, but I trust them to get that right about as much as I'd trust an aggy holding a bottle of lotion to watch my sheep.

[Dahobbs 17,682]

5 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Yeah, but I trust them to get that right about as much as I'd trust an aggy holding a bottle of lotion to watch my sheep.

At least you know they are actually going to stick with the sheep rather than bail and do something else. So, yes, trust aggies more. 

[MNLonghornFUKM 8,822]

Yeah, but I trust them to get that right about as much as I'd trust an aggy holding a bottle of lotion to watch my sheep.

Yea well the sheep is going to be warmed up while you sit inside and shiver

[conVINCEd 21,469]

Just got home in N. Dallas.  Power back on and the house is at 60.  It was at 52 when we left yesterday afternoon and we were losing about 1 degree per hour with two roaring fires going.  So it definitely dipped well into the 40’s overnight, which tells me it came back on pretty early this morning to already be back up to 60.

[Skipper 6,202]

30 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Having an issue with just 1 toilet that is on an outside wall.  It won't refill. The other toilet (is on an inside wall) does refill.  I don't have a hair dryer (blek), so what other options are there? 

 

Sidenote--just slipped and fell on my own property and I will be suing myself. 

I tried hair dryer that didn't help turned on my Sauna for first time on adjoining wall (humblebrag - came with house,  and hey, have been conserving electricity!)) that didn't help.  Inspected entire house, attic, couldn't find anything.  Finally said fuck it, turned valve off, and ate lunch.  Came back 30 minutes later, turned valve on, and it worked.   Outside wall got some sunlight so I'm guessing that's what helped.  No apparent leak so far so crossing my fingers.

[Pancho 44,996]

3 minutes ago, Skipper said:

I tried hair dryer that didn't help turned on my Sauna for first time on adjoining wall (humblebrag - came with house,  and hey, have been conserving electricity!)) that didn't help.  Inspected entire house, attic, couldn't find anything.  Finally said fuck it, turned valve off, and ate lunch.  Came back 30 minutes later, turned valve on, and it worked.   Outside wall got some sunlight so I'm guessing that's what helped.  No apparent leak so far so crossing my fingers.

Yeah, I just taped a heating pad to the wall to warm the pipes, and it looks like it has worked as it's refilling. 

Some bro on ABC13 who apparently is a plumber said that yeah, people can drip their faucets but what we should really be doing is flushing our toilets every 1-2 hours to keep that water running.  

[Skipper 6,202]

Just now, Pancho said:

Yeah, I just taped a heating pad to the wall to warm the pipes, and it looks like it has worked as it's refilling. 

Some bro on ABC13 who apparently is a plumber said that yeah, people can drip their faucets but what we should really be doing is flushing our toilets every 1-2 hours to keep that water running.  

I set an alarm for 4AM and broke ice in pool, ran faucets heavy and flushed all toilets.  Still worked then. Then when I got up at 7 focused on pool checked faucets and hot water flow but flat out forgot about upstairs toilet until I took a piss around 9 or 9:30.  So yep, that window got me.

[Blotto 23,579]

Coworker just sent this. Friends of her kids.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeLumFsx/

 

Edited February 16, 2021 by Blotto
cant embed apparently

[The Royal We 3,072]

1 hour ago, Bartles said:

Do we have any east Texas check-ins? Are people inching over to Shreveport where it seems like hotels are normal? Or are the roads just impossible?

I'm getting an early days of Katrina vibe, like we know this is bad but the specifics won't be revealed for a couple days at least. It's pretty terrifying.

Lake Nacogdoches checking in here.  We are on Deep East Texas Electric Co-Op and they've been doing rolling brownouts pretty regularly.  The first few times we were out for 15-20 minutes, then 30 minutes each and then this morning we were out for almost 90 minutes before coming back up.  But it has always come back and has been more up than down, so I applaud them for their efforts - whatever the hell they are doing.

I've been dripping/streaming every faucet in the house and haven't had any inside issues so far.  On the west side of our house I have two hose bibs that are frozen up and one of them that is on the other side of the unheated garage wouldn't free up after 15 minutes of a heat gun right on it.  I re-wrapped it and am hoping for the best when it thaws out.  I think all of my hose bibs are connected to 3/8ths copper lines so maybe they have a little more "give" in them than PVC? 

It's really sunny and about 24 here right now and I'm thankful for the sun!  The snow is light and fluffy and has made for much better sledding for the kids than the last snowpocalypse.

[fattyflattie 4,638]

7 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Yeah, I just taped a heating pad to the wall to warm the pipes, and it looks like it has worked as it's refilling. 

Some bro on ABC13 who apparently is a plumber said that yeah, people can drip their faucets but what we should really be doing is flushing our toilets every 1-2 hours to keep that water running.  

I’ve been putting hot water on for 5 mins, then cold for 2 mins, then mixed for 5 mins in every faucet in the house on 4 hour intervals. Flush each toilet 2x during this process. Run shower for 90 seconds.  Did this all around house for last day and a half but forgot the tub.  Now it makes a funky noise when I turn on the hot water.  So about to pull that apart and see if it’s leaking or what.  But I figured by running some hot water, it would keep the pipes in attic moving to fill up the water heaters a bit, just keeping everything moving.  Team no drip outside.  Haven’t checked the bibs yet. We shall see how that goes. 

[WhatTheBuck 28,798]

54 minutes ago, Pancho said:

I don't have a hair dryer (blek)

Wtf? I wish I had a shower-sized hair dryer that would blow dry my whole body. 

[RPM 26,355]

You city folk crack me up.

[workswithseed 2,111]

1 hour ago, bernorange said:

Damn.  Hope you peeps without power/water/heat manage and stay safe.  I seem to be lucky so far.  

I just figured you were in your heated bunker running your diesel generator to keep away from the insanity above ground. 

[Godzillatron 292]

Well outside spigots still a drippin so thank God for that. 
Power off for 10 hours now. 

Apparently dripping the hose bibs was the correct answer. My neighbors and I all covered. All frozen.

[MaybeACoordinator 8,349]

Little heat leprechauns came and thawed out my cold water tap in the bathroom so I am all systems go, but I haven't tried the washing machine, which has pretty much been exposed to the elements in a screened in porch throughout. Pipes wrapped in noodles and a decrepit space heater left nearby but....

[abuelo gringo 321]

32 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Yeah, I just taped a heating pad to the wall to warm the pipes, and it looks like it has worked as it's refilling. 

Some bro on ABC13 who apparently is a plumber said that yeah, people can drip their faucets but what we should really be doing is flushing our toilets every 1-2 hours to keep that water running.  

Two over seventies in this household.  Flushing regularly not a problem.

[mdleast 8,308]

Wtf? I wish I had a shower-sized hair dryer that would blow dry my whole body. 

[Guadaloopy 11,014]

Friends/Family: When are you gonna get the heck out of Commie-fornia and move back to Texas?

Me: (checks outside temp)

[BrazilHorn 6,634]

On Reddit - word is that TxDot in Austin is out of sand. Just in time for additional winter weather tonight.