Frozen Pipes-WOW!

[Jeff Wisnia]

Came across this photo today. I don't doubt that it's real.

The home next to us froze up a year ago January, when the owners were away for the winter. I was the one who first noticed it when I saw three large dirty brown frozen "waterfalls" on the outside of one of their garage doors. It's a year later now, the house is stiull unoccupied, and the owners are still negotiating with their insurer over the issue of their "abandonment" without taking any appropriate safeguards to prevent the several hundred thousand dollars of water damage which occurred.

Sure convinced me that the next time we leave home for more than a day in the winter I'm gonna remember to at least close the main water shutoff and invest forty bucks in a low temperature alarm which will dial up a buddy with a key to our place.

See:

Jeff

[Lou W]

The AAA plaque at the back of the garage is a nice touch!

[Joseph Meehan]

Also remember to turn off you water heater.

[John Hines]

Actually, most of them have a vacation/low setting for this purpose, letting the unit idle, but not cooling off, and allowing moisture to condense to cause rust.

[Joseph Meehan]

I was thinking more of the problem that may occur if someone accidentally drains the hot water heater while the water is off.

[The Gnerd]

Happened across the street from my buddy:

People signed a contract for a new house, moved out of their old house. Wife wanted to leave the water on, so agents, buyers, etc could use the potty, etc. Well, the pipes burst (I think they were out of town, and nobody noticed for a few days).

So, long story short, their house was trashed to the tune of $30-40k, homeowners wouldn't pay it 'cause the house was un-occupied, and they took it in the ass 100% on the eventual sale.

Talk about an expensive potty break.

[Jeff Wisnia]

That'd be hard to do in my house, the hot water heater is in the basement, and with the main shut off there's no way it could be drained through normal use of any faucet or appliance. It'd be unlikely that anyone with enough knowledge and desire to find the heater and open its drain valve wouldn't know to throw the breaker before draining it.

I was just thinking about what I should do to eliminate the kind of horrific water damage that our next door neighbor suffered if our house did lose its heat while we were away and a pipe froze and cracked.

Here's what I saw when I looked out our side windows last year. Dirty brown frozen ribbons of ice coming down one of the neighbor's garage doors, from the cracked pipes above.

If I thought there was a high probability of that happening I'd probably take the trouble go through the full freeze prevention steps of draining everything, antifreezing the toilets, etc. We heat with two separate heat pump systems, so it'd probably take losing electric power to the house for an extended period before things got cold enough to freeze up.

Jeff

[Chris Schmelzer]

3 LUXURY cars?

I see ONE luxury car (Porsche) and an old grand cherokee and a very old VW convertible..

[Joseph Meehan]

That should be fine. I don't think it happens too often, especially in your case.

[Oldylocks]

Sometimes you have to take creative license in order to more accurately mimic the syntax of the television ad being imitated.

And even an old grand cherokee would be a luxury to me.