During our freakishly cold weather last week, we ended up with frozen plumbing...and when your plumbing is PVC, you've got a small disaster on your hands. I forget what day it was when the water stopped flowing, but when it thawed out at the end of the week it didn't take me long to realize I was in for a nasty job. To make a ling story short I spent half of Saturday, all day Sunday, and all day Monday crawling around in slimy mud and sharp rocks repairing busted lines. We went about eight days without running water. I finally fixed the last leak yesterday evening. To say my first hot shower in eight days was heavenly would be a bit of an understatement.
Most all of us live with basic modern conveniences that make life so much more pleasant, but I wonder just how jaded we are. I know I'd grown to take some of these things for granted, but last week opened my eyes...and I know a lot of folks were much worse off than we were.
I surely won't take warmth and running water for granted ever again.
That sucks. And I agree with you that valuing the simple things is the way to go.
A few years ago when we had a house in PA, the line from the main froze in the yard around New Years. Took about a week to thaw. We spent 5 of those 7 days in hotels. It was a freak thing, like what's been going on in TX. I also had to crawl around in the mud under the house. Hated that schit!
A few weeks ago, I had to take some steps to keep the radiant heating system from freezing when it got down around -30, with wind chill -50 up here for a week or so. Some exposed parts of the foundation get the worst of the cold when the wind comes from the North. My neighbors forgot to pay attention, and part of their concrete pad froze, causing their radiant line to freeze and break. They've got a mess to deal with now, when they get around to it. I've also got an exposed water line from my well to the house, in a hole in the ground in a falling-apart shed. The old storage tank is still attached to the line out there, and still holds water, though we now have a tank in the basement as well. I keep an electric heater set for its lowest setting in that hole and running most of the winter. When weather is as severe as it gets up here, I've always got to be looking at ways it can bite my ass.
