For those of you who chimed in thanks for playing. The answer to the quiz was (yes Douglas was right) frozen pipes. A week after the fact the drama has subsided, but, in the heat (reverse pun intended) of the moment it was a bit of an eye opener.
Here's the short version. On Monday night Michael and I attended our respective holiday parties and then met up at a friend's 5 annual 27th birthday bowling party. By the time we got home it was around 2:00? --not sure. After gettling in and in an attempt to stave off the after effects of a night of drinking Michael went immediately for a glass of water. There was none. That's when the the happy drinker went to (dare I say) the homeowning doomsayer.
It was 9 degrees outside and the furnace that slowly loses water must have shut off sometime in the early morning (we had just replaced all of the valves in an attempt to begin to sort out the issue). By the time we got home the main running in from the street and the pipes running up to the kitchen at the back of the house were frozen solid. Of course at that point we did not know that. AND, we couldn't fill the furnace because, you got it, no water.
I hopped on line and began feverishly reading about what to do about frozen pipes. Luckily I found out that using the Brulee torch was probably not such a good idea for thawing. A hair dryer was the solution most offered. Sadly our current styles don't call for one and we don't own one. I considered hooking up some sort of feed from the dyer but that one slowly fizzled.
Michael at the same time was birthing babies-- I mean boiling water to heat hot towls that he was then wrapping around the main in the basement. At first this seemed to work as the water began to flow. Later we deduced that all we had really done was bleed all of the water out of the house (probably not such a bad idea).
After tusseling with it the better portion of the night we finally set up a 1500 watt light in front of the pipe and hoped that would keep the pipes from bursting. I finally went to bed around 5:00 am and (as I am my fathers child) worried the rest of the night that the light was going to set the house on fire.
At 7:30 in the morning I called my friend Brennan who saved the day by providing 1) the hair dryer that WAS succesful in thawing out the pipes and 2) a heater that we later used to heat up the kitchen enough to thaw the pipes at the back of the house (along with copius amounts of moral support).
The good news is 1) none of the pipes busrt and 2) we survived yet another test of home ownership.
Comments