The Polar Vortex Froze Our Pipes

We had a frozen pipe in the apartment last week. I was the hero who saved the house.

I came home from work Wednesday night to find the temperature in the apartment was 57F. We'd left it at 62 for the day, as we always do when we're not at home. House rules from the landlord state that we can't set it below 60, so we're always within the rules.

We've lost heat once before, but it turned out all that was needed that time was to reset the gas: flip the switch off and on and voila. So, I tried that. Hard reset the gas, hard reset the thermostat and cranked it up. Then I waited to see if it was going to heat up any. 45 minutes and nothing. Still cold.

Called the property manager, who called the plumber who set up the system in the first place, but nobody picked up. So the property manager left messages with the plumber, then called me back to give me the plumber's numbers in case I didn't get a return call, and he instructed me to call his cell as well if I didn't hear back, but that he would be in a meeting until 9pm.

Waited. Property manager called back (presumably having stepped out of his meeting), to say the plumber is away on a family emergency, so he called the gas company to come and take a look (at this point we still had no idea what the problem was). No idea when the gas company would send someone, but we were "on the list."

Gas guy showed up, took a look, twisted some things, examined some things, and proclaimed that it was most likely a frozen pipe and there's nothing he could do and that we should call a plumber. Great. Gas guy says he'll bill the landlords for his time, and left us a copy of the receipt. Whew, good thing we're not paying: $70 for "half an hour" to tell us he can't fix it.

So I called the property manager's cell and left a message updating him on the status, then called the landlords directly. In the theme of the night, landlord wasn't at home; away at the movies. I spoke with his wife, and between the two of us we called more than half a dozen plumbers in the area. Most didn't even pick up, not even on the "emergency line" they leave in their voicemail message. While I was finally on the phone with one, who *laughed* at me for setting the temperature to 62 in this below-zero weather (the nerve), who was actually miles away despite their google maps address being in my town, and ended up telling me they don't actually service our brand of boiler, the landlady called back and I missed her call.

Called her back, and she said she finally made contact with a plumber and they were sending someone over in 20 minutes.

30+ minutes later and the plumber showed up smelling of cigarettes. Nice guy though. Did his best despite not knowing where the pipes go when they disappear under the floor since he wasn't the one who built it. He took a heat gun to some likely spots, and then when that didn't work he set up clamps to send electricity through the pipes to try to warm it up. Nothing.

Meanwhile, the landlord called as he was back from the movies. This saga started just after 5pm when I returned from work, remember, and it was by then after 9pm. Landlord told me he'd be there by 10pm with some space heaters as an interim measure. Then the plumber asked me some questions and I let the landlord talk to the plumber on my phone. The plumber was interested in the landlord's storage space behind our apartment that is "insulated but not heated."

Landlord showed up just after 10pm with a terrifying propane heater that is literally a thing of propane you would put in your gas grill, with a contraption you hook on top. It's got warnings all over it that you're not to use it except outdoors or in well ventilated construction areas. Landlord set it up and ran it for maybe 20 minutes, then took the plumber around back to show him the storage space.

During that time, the fire alarm went off (probably from how quickly the heater was heating up), so I turned off the propane heater and it stopped. The plumber packed up and left. The landlord offered to get us a room at a hotel so my husband and I wouldn't have to stay over in the cold, but we refused. It wasn't that frigid yet. And the propane heater really had warmed it up a bit. And we do own copious amounts of blankets. The landlord promised to return at 8am with safer electric heaters. He showed me how to work the propane heater, and left it with us, with a warning not to leave it on for very long at a time. No worries. It's such a terrifying heater I didn't leave it on for more than 7 minutes at a time.

That was a cold night. We survived, though, in warm pajamas and piles of blankets.

I stayed home from work to coordinate Thursday's repairs. The landlord called after 8am to say he'd overslept and still had to go out and buy the heaters. So in the meantime, I went and bought a bunch of plastic totes and proceeded to organize the entire house in case a pipe burst. Nothing like the threat of your house flooding to make you clean it up.

The day passed with many phone calls, moving around the electric heaters the landlord finally brought over, cleaning the house, and finally, early afternoon, making the observation that saved the house.

The landlord had brought over more heaters for the storage area in the back. He was in our apartment dropping off another electric heater when I said, "Is that light from the heaters you set up?"

There was a strange, steady orange light making odd square orange patches on the wall of our shower. The landlord said, "Hmm." and then, "That doesn't look right."

He went out back again, and for the rest of the afternoon I heard hammering and voices and at one point a celebratory, "Heyyyy!" I continued to clean the house, moving furniture away from the baseboards. It wasn't until about 4:15pm that I got a call from the landlord to say he'd gone out to get a bite to eat, but that he thought he'd found the problem and to hold off on testing the heat for a little while longer.

After 5pm, landlord came back with another plumber, presumably the original one who couldn't come before. We tested the heat, and miracle of miracles, it came on. Hooray! Plumber said to landlord, "Good job. You did it."

The landlord told me it was my observation of that light that led him to find the problem. He found a whole uninsulated wall between our bathroom and his unheated storage area, along with some uninsulated pipes that feed right into our apartment. The orange light was coming in through the storage area's one window, and hitting the shower just right for a small window of time. I have never been in this storage area, so I don't know exactly what the setup is, but that seems like a fairly major oversight. It's apparently a miracle that this hasn't happened before. Whoops.

Anyway, they insulated and covered everything, which was all the hammering I heard. And the heat is functional again, so hooray happy endings!

The happier ending: since I cleaned the house so thoroughly that day, my husband rewarded me with the best present ever. Friday night he took me to Barnes and Noble and bought me an armful of books. :)

Comments

  1. Frozen pipes can be a difficult task to unravel, but I can see how amazing you tackled that issue. Your trip to Barnes and Noble is definitely a well-deserved reward. Anyway, I hope the pipes don't run into that problem again. Thanks for sharing that! All the best to you! :)

    Gordon Patton @ Bison Plumbing

    ReplyDelete

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