So that is what electricians did in the 1963 big freeze

[ARW]

[Tim Lamb]

I'm too idle to watch it all. The company I was training at as a technician apprentice had a nice line in producing low voltage transformers used to pass a current through buried frozen water pipes:-)

Wouldn't do much with blue poly now!   

[bert]

They were still doing this in the 80s/90s for the Motorola plant in Scotland.

[Fredxx]

Perhaps you could use High Voltage instead. Ice is the poorer conductor wrt water, so power would be dissipated in the ice preferentially, ideal really.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I lived through that and where my father worked had a car park on the roof, but luckily the driveway up to the roof had underground electric heating. One problem was though that it was only running just before the first employees arrived and a short time in the afternoon, resulting in it being covered in black ice most of the rest of the time! Brian

[Tricky Dicky]

I can remember snow which by this time was just pure ice lying on the ground right up to Easter. The snow had even gone black from soot settling on the surface. As for Cliff Mitchelmore going on about an act of Parliament going through to make new housing more resilient, I think most housing is probably less resilient few having fireplaces anymore not that we would have the supplies of coal or coke which I remember surviving on. Our 1975 bungalow with its gas central heating is vulnerable to power cuts which I hopefully soon put right with a gas fire installed in the lounge. I feel for modern high rise dwellers a 1963 freeze will make their homes into ice boxes.

Richard

[polygonum_on_google]

I remember that winter all too well. But it was the first winter I had in the UK (other than when too young to remember) so had no idea it was exceptional.

I was on the west coast of Scotland and, despite knowing how bad it was just a tiny bit inland, we had very little snow. At Christmas, we went to Sunderland and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and by golly it was cold with severe snow and ice.

[bert]

I was in Newcastle at the time and even though from the north east I would say it wasn't just cold it was f****ng cold.