Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Water works
For those of you who've been curious about my water situation, in short, it's still frozen.
Progress of a sort has been made. I've been running hot water through a 3/8 diameter line and sliding it down the ¾ inch supply line. The hot water melts the ice, allowing the 3/8 line to slide deeper into the supply line. That worked until it hit a 90 degree elbow that's buried underground.
A ¼ inch line spliced to the end of the 3/8 line is just small enough to turn the corner in the 90 degree elbow. Three more feet of supply got thawed out that way. However, I ran out of ¼ line before running out of ice. The supply line has never frozen this deep before, not in 40 years. With any luck, the additional 12 feet of line I picked up at the hardware store should do the trick. If not, I'm going to let nature take its course. It is warming up.
So what am I doing for water in the mean time? I'm hauling drinking water in the waterbricks that I used on the sailboat. That's 4 – 3.5 gallon water containers. Sometimes I fill them at my daughter's. Other times I walk down to my well and fill them at the overflow pipe.
Water for washing, dishes, and toilet flushing comes from melting snow on the woodstove. I even did a small load of laundry in a bucket. There's no shortage of snow. Let's call it making the best of a bad situation.
Tuesday was sunny and the temperature hit all of 50 degrees. Of course, it drops back down into the 20s at night, but that's normal enough for this time of year. Melt during the day, freeze at night. That's great for maple syrup, but we won't really thaw out until it stays above freezing at night.
In spite of these little problems, it's still good to be home.
-Sixbears
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If only it was a metal pipe, then ya could just hook the stick welder up to it and thaw quickly. Sadly it don't work on plastic. Suggest digging it up this summer and wrapping it with a heat tape eh
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a firefighter the city I worked in used a big gasoline powered welder to thaw city pipes. They once set 6 houses on fire, at the same time. Opps! They had a bad map of the water system.
DeleteOf course, I could just stay the heck south until everything is thawed out.
I was being polite and wasn't mentioning that ya shoulda just stayed down here lol.
DeleteThe problem with frozen water is that it willmeventually ruin the pipe. If you don't want to dig it up and redo it, perhaps you could mound dirt or brush over it in the winter.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping it was an unusual year, but I'm definitely going to give it some thought.
DeleteI grew up in the south, Montgomery to be exact. When I got married we moved to Huntsville so I could finish engineering. Stayed there for five years. That winter, 1977-78 it got rather cold and froze the pipe from the street even though I had the facets dripping. Killed my wifes bulbs in the ground. Pissed us off enough we moved to Florida, Cocoa Beach area. I'm never going back where it'll freeze water in the pipe that is supposedly buried below the frost line.
ReplyDeleteI live up in NW Florida now, halfway between Tallahassee and Pensacola. It gets cold enough even there.
I feel your pain.
I guess you can't go back and edit once you preview. Otherwise I would have fixed, now there's a good word, facet to faucet. And signed Wade in NW Florida.
ReplyDeleteBTW what is 'Select Profile'?
Wade
NW FL had some cold this past winter. At least it doesn't last very long.
Delete"Select Profile?" is if you are posting under some account other than Anonymous.
I'm almost finished with my re-plumb and the water is a balmy 42 degrees, and I still was kayaking in it yesterday. Well, my wetsuit, gloves, and booties are good to minus 10. I was real careful not to roll.
ReplyDeleteThe wetsuit is a must this time of year, but I've done plenty of canoeing and kayaking without it. (to be young and crazy again!) Even had to swim in the icy waters a time or two. You've got about 30 seconds of useful muscle control. At least I was with a group.
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