The joys of frozen pipes

This past week, Pittsburgh has been experiencing Momma Nature at her bitchiest. For four days, highs were in the single digits and lows were around -10 or so. What does that mean for us? Frozen pipes.

The brilliant DIYers who put our first floor bathroom on the house basically walled in a porch, added plumbing, ignored the finer points of insulation, and called it a job well done. That means that the pipes that feed our first floor shower (also our only shower until we get walls upstairs) are shielded from the elements by a sheet of plywood.

For three days, our pipes froze solid at night, and then we thawed them with a hair dryer during the day. On the third day, after an hour of the hair dryer, they remained frozen. On day 4, we invested in a heat gun. That was yesterday.

Last night, Mike went at the pipes in the basement with the heat gun while I fired away with my trusty hair dryer in the bathroom. We were excited when water started flowing. Less so when water flowed in the basement.

We discovered that one of our pipes was leaking - it had burst, but the hole seemed small. Since we're going to take out the walls in the kitchen, we went on an exploratory mission.

Here's Mike, after we discovered that the kitchen wall over these pipes is actually a drop ceiling tile that was taped and painted to the rest of the wall. He looks happy right?


I was on the phone with directory assistance to find out what time our local hardware store closed, when I heard dripping...then trickling...then a giant WHOOSH. Apparently the pipe hadn't fully thawed until we opened up the wall. A geyser of water shot out of the wall about 3 feet, spraying the entire kitchen. Forgive me for the lack of photographic evidence. I was busy screaming "SHUT IT OFF!" over and over again as Mike raced to the basement to shut of the main water valve.

After killing the water to the house, here's what we discovered. 1 burst pipe. 1 leaky pipe. 1 shower drain that isn't really connected to a drain and so it dumps on the ground when we shower. Aren't they pretty?
In this blurry picture, you can see where the pipe split, to the left of the 90 degree bend.

We turned on the water in the utility tubs downstairs and shut off the rest of the house's water. We now flush our toilet by pouring buckets of water down. We shower at my sister's house.

There was a heck of a draft coming in the wall, so we found an old framed poster and used that as a temporary patch. Classy!



Today, my dad came to the rescue. He and Mike have replaced the drain pipe and are working on the water pipes as I write. There have been three trips to the hardware store.



We would appreciate if you could close your eyes and wish for a non-leaking repair job, no injuries, and warmer weather. We need all three.

P.S. GO STEELERS!

***UPDATE***
Thanks to Dad the hero, and his trusty assistant Mike, the pipes are fully repaired. Dad's also going to help us reroute the pipes in the upstairs bathroom so that we can start rebuilding it.

Thanks to the best defense in the NFL, the Steelers clinched the AFC Championship and are on their way to the Super Bowl.

It's been a good 24 hours.