Frozen

It was SO cold! How cold was it? So cold that the water in the toilet bowl was frozen solid!

While we were heading out of town for the holidays, we didn’t prepare for the arctic blast that hit most of the country. And since the majority of the BAB isn’t heated, everything froze. We were used to the place being cold, but it has never been this cold for this long. Luckily, our living space was fine, but we could have a huge mess on our hands in the rest of our finally dry inside BAB.

With the many days of temperatures below freezing, all water became solid. These abandoned water bottles will stand in for the frozen gross looking second floor toilet bowl.

We wouldn’t know if we had any leaks from burst pipes until things warm up again but we needed to figure out a way to minimize the leaks. We talked thru a few options and decided on a quick fix that, unfortunately, eliminates the water supply to the second floor and to the dock where our ice maker is currently located. We were planning to abandon or demolish the old pipes for the new build out anyway, so the inconvenience of not having a toilet and sink outside of our apartment for the construction period is downside of this option. We broke out the old-school ice cube trays for now. For the rest, we’ll figure that out when we get there.  On to the fix.

This is our crazy water supply situation. It include some new stuff that we added connecting to some ancient pipes.

Here’s the link to the water supply replacement odyssey. It is one of my favorite posts!

Step one, cut the old steel pipe.

Leave the end open over a bucket so the water can drain out as the pipes thaw.

The old pipes are no longer connected to the supply, but the line to the apartment is intact.

Remove the corroded coupling, which, fortunately came off pretty easily, and attach a new valve.

Attach a short length of pipe to the new valve.

Attach a cap to the pipe.

Turn the water back on and hope for no leaks. Of course there aren’t any leaks- Tom has mad soldering skills.

The new arrangement- when we want to expand to the new pipes, the cap can be removed.

So far so good. The weather is warming up this week so we’ll be on leak watch. I guess we celebrated being dry inside a tad too early.