more on the weather...

BURRR is all we can say!!! The freezing subzero temperatures are taking its toll. Friday morning we woke up to finding out that school was closed because it was TOO COLD and then we realized the we had no heat in the house! Apparently the 25 below zero night had frozen our pipes, so we had no heat. We thought we were doing the right thing by having our thermostat set to go down to 65 degrees at night while we slept and to come back on up to 73 at 5am. But when we got up, the house was frigid. We have a comfort zone heater to supplement our heat to save on fuel but we soon found out that since the heat is set for 73 during the day that the furnace does not kick on and circulate the heat for hours while the house cools down to 65. The hot water stayed dormant in the pipes while the 25 below cold air was busy freezing the pipes in the front section of the house. Because the way the house was built 15 years ago, the builder placed the pipes too close to the outside wall of the house causing the pipes to be more exposed to the elements. Thankfully, with the supplement heat, the natural gas fireplace downstairs and the thermostat being left turned up downstairs helped to keep the house warm during the night, but it was not enough to keep those pipes from freezing.
When we got up in the morning, my dad came over to check the furnace, which was fine. When we could not get the heat to circulate upstairs we called a heating specialist who came over and informed us that we had a frozen pipe somewhere and speculated that it was on the front wall of the house, which by the way, is precisely where our 52" plasma tv is mounted on the wall, along with all the wiring for it installed in the wall and all of the in-wall speakers. It's also the wall where my computer and work files are and other tons of wiring for the house! So first things first! Sean had to take the day off from work to figure this all out. Andrew was home from school, so that added to the need for help. Unfortunately, since I could not take the day off from work... we were doing an "inaguration page" test run for the front pages of the newspaper for next tuesday and I had to be there while the press was running it off and we had to do color correction (it's a historical day, you know, and we are trying not to screw it up) It's my responsibility to be sure it goes as smooth as possible along with getting ads and other pre-press things finished before the weekend. The newspaper does not stop for frozen pipes! So anyway, Sean was left to take care of it all. I brought Matthew to preschool (which was thankfully open) and headed off to work. Sean had to prepare for the attempt at thawing the pipes so he had to move as many things as he could since there was a chance that the pipes would burst! BUT it's not like you can just take the tv off the wall. If the pipes burst, we would have a lot of water damage. He worked at it all day and was instructed to go slow with a blowdryer since thawing too quickly would cause the pipes to burst. Finally, I could get done work and come home to help. No sooner had I left from work when Sean said that he got the pipe unthawed but that for some reason the water was spraying out from the furnace pipes. He called the heat guy back and he came over and replaced a valve that had blown on the furnace because of the built up pressure in the pipes.
WOW, got to love the weather around here! We were lucky this time and now we've learned that when the weatherman calls for below zero, we have to keep the heat up! So much for trying to save on fuel! We figure that it's not worth trying to save a few bucks on fuel since it would cost us MUCH more if our pipes froze, exploded and damaged all of our belongings! Lessson learned.