Frozen pipes in Boston!
Cripes, here I am, reporting on our adventures in the tropics—while here in the Boston area, it is now -10 degrees Fahrenheit, and windy! (Real feel -41!) So much for our unseasonably warm weather. Unbeknownst to me, two windows in our basement had blown open, and the whole basement was a deep freeze. It was about 1 a.m. when I noticed no water from the faucet and went running down to discover this.
Two hours later, after screwing the windows shut, setting up space heaters, and running a heat gun over the pipes near where they come into the house, we have water flowing again in most of the taps (still just a trickle in the kitchen faucet). Thank God, we seem to have escaped without any burst pipes. Wow. Let this still be true in the morning. We gonna leave those taps trickling right through the night.
Next day: Everything good, sort of. The kitchen faucet wasn’t frozen; it was blocked by a slug of grit that must have been sent up the pipes when things released. Which probably also explains the slow-filling toilet tank, which I’ll have to look at tomorrow. And the water meter is dripping into the frozen sump area, so I’ll need to call the water department as soon as they’re open. But no burst pipes!
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