Frozen Pipes and Distractible Teens

Last week was cold. Really cold. Tuesday evening, one of my kids turned on the bathroom water tap and realized no water was coming out. Something was clearly wrong. You’re probably thinking this child came downstairs immediately to tell me something was wrong. Don’t be silly. This child—whom I shall call She Who Will Never Be A Plumber—came downstairs to tell me about the upcoming shows that she couldn’t wait to watch. Then she went to bed.

Wednesday morning, I tried to turn on the taps. “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you about that,” said She Who Will Never Be A Plumber. An unhappy discussion ensued, and a list of rules was created to ensure that this child would know when a house issue was more important than a stupid TV show. The rules:

*If it used to move and it suddenly stops moving: Tell me immediately
*If it used to not move and it suddenly starts moving: Tell me immediately
*If it used to be silent and it suddenly becomes noisy: Tell me immediately
*If it used to make noise and it suddenly becomes silent: Tell me immediately

Of course, this did nothing to remedy the current situation, which was that we were now only a few frozen pipes away from becoming a pioneer family—plus there was the looming possibility that the cracked pipes were going to create an impressive waterfall down into our kitchen.

So I did what any independent, middle-aged, reasonably intelligent person would do in a situation like this. I called my dad. He’s 77 years old and, if my calculations are correct, is 36.5 billion times handier than I am. He and his equally handy neighbor had the problem diagnosed in half an hour. Turns out when the previous owners had lobbed the upstairs bathroom into the house (to quickly increase its sale value), they’d shoved the pipes through a poorly-insulated exterior wall. To complicate matters, mice had painstakingly chewed holes through the foundation under the patio. The result: Outdoor air was blowing through the mouse holes into the old wine cellar and then up through the insulation-free walls, turning the water pipes into icicles.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that the reason I’d never noticed the icy winds in the wine cellar was because no bottle of wine has ever made it past the kitchen unopened. I’ve never actually used the wine cellar.]

Luckily, our bathroom pipes turned out to be made of flexible plastic, not copper. Which meant our wall icicles were not likely to split, even though they’d been frozen over 14 hours. Valves were shut off, things were warmed, magic ensued and within two hours I had running water. I then staple-gunned heavy plastic all around the bottom of the porch, forming a cheap, yet surprisingly effective wind-blocking skirt. It is as attractive as it sounds.

In my last post, My Michelle Duggar Moment, I mentioned the 119 mice I’d killed since moving in last March. We’re up to 126 mice, now, but their freeloading days will soon be over. As soon as it warms up enough that I can lay on the ground without developing hypothermia, I’ll convince myself that I’m not claustrophobic, crawl through the dark, filthy 16” high space under the porch and block up their entry holes. Alcohol will be involved.

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