Well, even though my builders didn't bother to insulate anything in the guest suite bath, and even though there's a clear pathway for outdoor air to come in and play around its water pipes, it took the last few days' incredibly cold weather and stiff western breeze to finally let the water come out to play.
The bathroom, positioned just over our front door, sprayed a glorious fountain of freezing water down our front steps. These photos don't really do it justice, as this is after a couple of hours of cleanup and knocking down most of the icicles.
Both hot and cold water pipes had burst, knocking a hole in the wall between the guest suite bathtub and toilet. The cold water faucet's compression fitting had also blown off, so there was a secondary eruption underneath the sink. To my builders -- nice job on that compression fitting.
We had sheets of water in the guest bedroom, in the entryway on the first floor and into NDM's office, and of course in the basement. Water was coursing down through the vents, through the light fixtures, and through my evil smoke alarm system. The system's humidity sensor had them all screaming at a mile a minute the whole time.I'm just glad all parental units were close by to help out with our water garden. I hate to think how much fun this would have been by ourselves -- or worse, coming home to it after a vacation.
Hope everyone else is having a dry week!
4 comments:
Pipes froze at Marianne's house across the street, but didn't burst.
She knocked a hole in the wall, and used a hair dryer on them to thaw them out.
yuck.
Holy crap! It's nice of this to happen while you were there, as opposed to gone for a week.
Poorly insulated is one thing, but even an exterior wall cavity with no insulation at all shouldn't get cold enough to freeze pipes as long as the house is heated! Tell me that that soffit above the door isn't vented up into the bathroom wall?! Does Westmont have a building inspector?
I can only assume the building inspector signed off without stepping inside the building. Ah well.
My neighbors all flooded in the rain today -- at least my house was dry from external water :-)
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