Shower's frozen (again)

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts over a long span of time. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date, the code doesn't work, the ideas haven't aged well, or the ideas were terrible to begin with. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

It was so freaking cold last night that the pipes for our shower froze (again). Unlike the previous two times, this time they're totally frozen as opposed to just mostly frozen where the hot water works but the cold water doesn't.

The pipes go from the water tank all the way across the basement getting smaller and smaller until they go up an outside wall in the corner of the house to our shower. That corner of the house gets no sunlight and it's exposed to the wind. The house has terrible, no-good, very-bad insulation, too.

The last couple of times I was able to unfreeze the pipes by sitting in the basement with a hair dryer in the hole that the bath tub drain pipe comes down from. This time that didn't seem to work.

On top of that, our heating bill for last month was $400. Our landlord says that's normal, but I looked through all the heating bills for all the apartments I've rented over the lat 6 years and I've never used that many therms before. This apartment isn't any bigger than previous apartments--it's actually smaller! I think S and I are going to move when our lease is up.

I think the moral of this story is that having alcohol wipes, an extension cord, and a hair dryer on hand is really handy.

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