I know you love the snappy blog titles. Admit it.
Well, despite our dire predictions, some time during the night, the city got the tree out of the middle of the road, which is a blessing for everyone who lives up the hill and was planning on driving to work this morning. Unfortunately, they did not actually remove it yet, so my yard and driveway is still full o' tree. Lucky I take the prison bus, huh? Hoping when I go home tonight it'll be gone, but not holding my breath. I suppose I can spend most of the morning at work tomorrow calling the DPW if necessary! Also, the tree is blocking the (blog-famous) community mailbox, so not sure anyone on my street is getting any mail till it's gone.
So, yesterday evening while I was out shoveling a path from my door to the sidewalk and the sidewalk to the neighbor's driveway so we weren't completely trapped in the house, the older son next door (the one with the kids) came over and started helping me shovel. He thanked me for the cookies, said that they were delish and they scarfed them all down, and that he wasn't the one that cleared my snow that day. Oops. Now I don't know who did, but I am forced to admit there's someone else on my street who's not a douchebag. And possibly send them cookies! It's a mystery! Anyway, we had a nice little chat, and during it, he asked me if on snow days, he could park in my driveway, since they really don't have room for all the vehicles of everyone who lives in his house. In return, he will happily remove all my snow. Do you think I hesitated to accept this offer immediately, boys and girls? If you do, you haven't been paying attention. (I also did not point out that if he had been parked where he proposes to park on Wednesday morning, he'd have had a tree on top of his truck. But that point is moot now anyway. Heh.)
There's one problem out of the way. So then I was thinking about how we didn't have power for six hours yesterday and how what if they hadn't gotten it back on? My house would have gotten so cold--would it have made my pipes freeze? And I realized I do not know what you are supposed to do to avoid that. Was I supposed to shut off my main water valve or something in that eventuality? Well, I googled, as you do, and found something about letting the faucets drip. So if the power goes out for, like, over a day or something in the winter, if I just turned on the water a tiny bit in all my sinks, tubs, and showers and shut off the valve to the washing machine, that would work? Or am I wrong? Honestly, this has never happened and I have lived in this house since 1995, but yesterday scared me.
So the other thing about having no power is that when I was talking to the neighbor (who I will keep calling that, because embarrassingly, I don't know his first name; I know his youngest brother's 'cause it's the same as my son's which is the only way I would remember it) he said he was just getting ready to hook up his generator when the power came back on. I kinda investigated that online today too, because I guess having emergency power would keep me n' my pipes from freezing, but besides the expense and the complicated-ness (<--new word, just made it up) of this, you need to place them outside when they are running, and I can't figure out where I could do that when everything is covered with snow. Because I would assume it would need to be somewhere close to where my electrical box in the garage is? Correct me if I'm wrong; you know I am a stupid woman about this shit. I don't even know how to keep my pipes from freezing. Sigh.
So THEN I started thinking that the solution to a.) not freezing without power and b.) not paying the outrageous amount of money I'm paying for heat is to suck it up and use that damn woodstove that no one has used since my mom died. Can't do that this winter now, because I didn't have the chimney cleaned. And then there's the problem that I don't know how to make a fire. I googled that too. There's youtube video. Of course. I also internet-investigated the possibility of converting it to a pellet stove, but apparently pellet stoves use electricity. Go figure. That's why they're not a pain in the ass to use.
Anyway, that's what my employer's been paying me to do for the past two hours. I'm sure I'm worth every penny.
In other completely unrelated news, I also just read something from a 28 year old woman who is putting her *60* year old mother into a nursing home. If I had to go into a nursing home at age 60, I would just kill myself first. I am completely serious. The woman doesn't even have dementia either, just a lot of medical problems. That's very scary to contemplate, that like twelve years from now I'd be unable to care for myself. (Everyone who's sitting there going, "Uh, yeah, you can't take care of yourself now, dude, you don't even know how to keep the pipes from freezing," can just STFU, okay?) But I'm pretty sure my future contractor second ex-husband won't put me in a home. If we're still married. And I am definitely sure he'd know how to hook up an emergency generator. Where'd I put my cocktail dress again?
xoxo
3 comments:
Power outages suck, and they always made living out in the woods much more challenging than here where it all goes underground and fails far less frequently. You're a bit in between, though still vulnerable, so you're very smart to focus on freezing pipes, since, all things being equal and plenty of blankets being on hand for the humans, that's where your power outage is going to screw with you first and the most. (60 year old mothers on electric O2 systems have larger issues, but they're all in the proverbial home, so NP, right?)
Moving water freezes much more slowly than standing, so you are also very smart to think of opening all the taps just a wee bit so some drips are coming out. This will hold you through reasonably-sub-freezing temperatures and for a reasonably long period of time, though not through a hard freeze or a protracted outage. For those, you can consider shutting off the water as it comes in from the street (I'm thinking you should have some sort of a valve somewhere like that which you might be able to find and figure out yourself, though a plumbing savvy neighbor might be able to show you, too) and then opening everything up and draining your interior plumbing to ride out the outage.
Generators are much more complex and expensive a solution for just a little pipe-freezing, and require an electrician and some many hundreds of dollars just to hook up. Themselves they often cost into the multiple thousands, depending on size. Mine in the woods was plumbed straight into our natural gas supply so it didn't need refueling. The do need to be installed outdoors, often in a little open-sided shed or such to keep the worst of the elements off them. They also need to be run regularly so they aren't all crapped out when you need them most. I wouldn't recommend bothering, unless you really really want internet, tv and microwave popcorn while you wait for the juice to come back on.
You all will be shocked to know that I do know where my main water valve is: almost directly across from the stairs when you walk down into the basement. I know this because my dad was paranoid about everyone knowing it in case of emergency and several times tested me and D on it, hahaha. (I cannot say whether or not he ever tested my mother on it, but if he did, I'm sure she just gave him the STFU face.)
Okay, I feel better with reassurance that I do now know how to keep the pipes intact.
Besides the running water, consider that your interior temperature, even without heat, will run 20- 30 F above the exterior temperature. So first, this ain't Vermont. Second, it means the critical time is after dark, when the interior temps are going below freezing for sure, and when open taps are a really super idea. Speaking as one who spent some time living without central heating. Unfortunately, you can't take the pipes to bed with you.
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