Weather

[evan1968]

Just another avg week here....
https://alerts.weather.gov/cap/wwaca...8893cf40370952

[Tool Guy - Kg]

Oh, you’re just making Shawn jealous again, Craig!

If global warming is making this -15°F, I’d hate to see global cooling.

[smifwal]

hell we got a inch or less and we managed to drag it out all day and some of the morning, There was a scare of another band of snow rolling in so they didn't want to pull the trigger on the plows. It is super cold out I had 2 loaders and 2 trucks gel up. I got one of the loaders going only to have the hydraulics gel up also( my new holland uses 10W-30 for the hydraulics and that is just too thick for this temp) I had a guy have his wheel fall off driving from 1 property and shot like a 1/4 my down the road and off in to a ravine. I could go on and on. It is going to be 50 degrees next week that is just crazy -10 and 50 four days later

[Tool Guy - Kg]

Cripes, we got at least another 11" today. It's getting tougher to get the snow blower to blow up and over the mounds along the driveway aprons.

But on a much more serious note:
I know a lot of y'all in Texas have electric furnaces. With it being so cold and having power outages, I hope there aren't pipes bursting in anyone's houses. Up north, it's not very common to have electric furnaces.

[Kman]

I've always had everything natural gas as much as possible. Stove, heater, water heater, fireplace, and even dryer. I figured when the power goes out, I've still got hot water and fireplace.

Well, that theory got shot out of the water today when our natural gas went out. Never before happened to me. So far we've been okay here at the house. It's about 63 degrees here, which isn't bad considering the gas has been off since 10 this morning. No hot water is my biggest complaint.

My church building didn't do as well. I turned up the heat there this afternoon to get it ready for anyone who wanted to come warm up there. I'd been gone about an hour and got a call to come back. A 1 1/2" fire suppression line had burst at a joint in the ceiling and dumped enough water to put at least an inch of water throughout the entire building.

Fortunately we got about fifteen people there quickly with brooms and squeegees and in a couple hours we had all the excess water out.

Unfortunately, while we were working a water line blew in one of the bathrooms.

Seems the idiot builders thought it a good idea to put the fire line above a dropped ceiling about a foot from an exterior north wall, and the only heat going to this long hallway was a couple of heat pumps, which are practically worthless in -11 degree temps. The second one to break supplied a toilet, and was run in the same fashion, except not on a north wall. It had some insulation and tape on it, but not near enough for Sub-Zero temps.

We spent all evening there today, and I'll probably be back tomorrow for a while to get the insurance claim and the disaster restoration people going.

It's not been a good week for us with this weather. Winter looks so much better on the Hallmark channel.

[Davy]

Yeah, this cold snap is going to be a major problem for a lot of us down here. Our official temperature is at Dallas Ft Worth airport and they said it was -3 there yesterday morning, 2nd coldest day ever recorded in this area.

Our electric is back on now but it was off for about 36 hours. Luckily my daughter and son in law's electric came back on at their house so they brought me their generator. That way we could have a little heater going in our bedroom. I'll be buying a generator once they show back up in the stores. I should have had one years ago.

There's going to be a lot of broken pipes in houses and tons of pool equipment repairs that will need to be done. Our houses aren't built to withstand this kind of weather.

[Just In Tile LLC]

Water seems to be on now since Monday, two young kids with no water for a week is rough let me tell ya! Luckily our power was only off for 8 hours or so, first day with internet too. First world luxuries sure are nice!

We'll see if this changes anything going forward building wise.

I guess time will tell if these larger swings of temperatures become more common or are natural cycles playing out once in awhile. Either way it's nice to be less stressed about explaining to kids why life changed so drastically in a week.

[Davy]

I've been working in a house where we turned a tub surround into a shower. When the electric went off, the homeowner and his girlfriend went to a hotel. When he texted me about it, I asked him if he turned his water off or at least left his faucets dripping. He said no to both, he didn't think about it. They came home to a flooded house. A pipe broke upstairs. The ceiling sheetrock in the living room fell and the kitchen ceiling is about to. What a mess. I'll be picking up my tools tomorrow morning and then make a few phone calls to get another job going.

[cx]

And just too much trouble to make a trip back to the house to shut off the water.

That is one of those times where the guy is very grateful that the human foot cannot kick the same human's ass.

[smifwal]

In the 10 years I have lived in my current house I have never let my faucets drip when it got cold and this is the first time I have ever had my pipes freeze. But it has not gotten as cold as it did last week. But It took 5 minutes with the electric heat tape, they were thawed out like it never happened.

[Just In Tile LLC]

For our city it wasn't the house pipes freezing so much as it was the city water lines busting. (but some houses and businesses definitely had busted pipes.)

I'm on a community well right outside city water supply but they had a couple main lines bust, one of the two storage containers ruptured, and apparently some electrical issues as the whole system froze or lost water.

I was collecting water from my roof melt to flush the toilets and being a tile guy luckily had plenty of buckets to store the water I collected.

[Kman]

Hot water line, above a dropped ceiling of a bathroom at church.



And a 1 1/2" fire suppression line above a dropped ceiling. The only heat in that area was heat pumps, which were worthless.

[Tool Guy - Kg]

I can’t imagine how many water pipes have burst down south. Yikes. Do y’all have water pipes in exterior walls where they are really susceptible to the freezing cold? Or is that mostly in just some of the older houses?

We had almost no snow this year until a January. And it’s dumping on us enough where I’m working the roof snow rake a lot more than I typically do. I’m taking 3’ of snow off some parts. It really makes you appreciate the comfort of a recliner when you’re done.

[cx]

I can recall one year when I was a kid, Goldstein, when we had to shovel three feet of snow off our roof. Bottom foot was nearly ice, so packed from melt and freeze. Had to be careful not to shovel off any shingles. But when it was done we didn't need no steenkin' ladder to get down, just walked down the pile that was just below the edge of the roof.

Do I miss the good parts of Yankee winters enough to wanna live up there again? Mmmmm, no, I don't think so. 'Specially as I get older and lazier.

[Just In Tile LLC]

Most houses I’ve worked in have water on an exterior wall. My kitchen and laundry plumbing are on the exterior walls. House built 2002.