The weather has been unusually cold across the country. It’s amazing how cyclical demands, that we have foresight of, can cause the same panic every time. The threat of a storm causes the same clearing out of supermarkets across the country. The day of the big chill last week, you couldn’t find pipe insulation, heating tape or anything else you would need to fix a weather related plumbing issue. It was weather conditions many never experienced before. I’m sure most people ignored the little signs throughout the years, like cold floors, drafts or the heating unit working overtime on colder days. Thankfully our clients didn’t have major issues and the only problem I had was at home.
We have a crawlspace under a bathroom extension with a toilet line that froze for the first time one day last winter. It never froze solid, just must have gotten slushy which stopped it from flowing. A blow dryer aimed at the pipe fixed it within an hour. Though I promised myself I would see what was going on under there in the summer, I never looked under the space to see all the insulation had fallen from the pipes. So without too much surprise last week’s fluctuations froze the pipe. Except with these temperatures a blow dryer wasn’t cutting it. Having to go under the crawl space in sub zero temperatures wasn’t up there on my favorite things to do. Thankfully the pipe didn’t break but it brings me to a point that we all know but always seem to forget.
Signs are like symptoms when you get sick. You treat the symptoms but you need to investigate to find out the cause because that’s what you want to treat. If you get bronchitis every year, continuing to take antibiotics doesn’t solve the problem, just band-aids the symptom.
I had many opportunities on sunny summer and spring days to get under there and investigate the signs. It was a simple fix that got complicated by the current conditions and the lack of supplies available.
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