| [Ben]: | Oh water, sweet water! | Discuss This [1 comment so far] View Comments | For those of you not following my icy escapades, we moved into our new home on February 4, 2007 and only had running water in one bathroom. After consulting friends and family, I finally called a big-name plumber. I'll go ahead and name names here, it was Benjamin Franklin Plumbers. The fella that showed up (FOUR hours late, punctual plumbers my right cheek) just looked around a bit. "Sorry Ben," he said, "it's frozen under the slab. You'll have to wait it out." He shrugged and charged me $50.00 for coming out.
Crap.
Today I started calling other plumbers to try to get one that could thaw in a slab. I'd heard of Hot Shot machines that would clamp onto copper pipes and send current down them until they cleared. Finally I got in touch with Jerry Hood of A & J Plumbing. Jerry dropped by with his equipment, started cranking current through the pipes and figuring out where the pipes were running. Finally we got things cleared with only minor damage. Anyone want to help me patch some drywall?
So what was the problem? Well, the builders had run the manifold to a wall in the garage and didn't insulate the pipes. Okay, they insulated some of the pipes (badly), but not all of them. The garage has been cold enough that the pipes all froze there. The laundry room still has a frozen discharge pipe, but I'm hitting the problem walls with space heaters. Hopefully things will clear up in the laundry room and we'll be good to go. In a minute I'm going to run to Menards to pick up some pipe insulation and heating tape (if they have any left) and am going to fix those pipes but good. |
| 2007-02-08
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Oh water, sweet water! |
