Return to front page | Return to News Archive
[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
Permanent Link:
Oh water, sweet water!
 
BenSwenson.com Home
Forums
User ID:
Password:
Register here
226 users 8210 posts 0 active users
 
Communications
Contact Administrator
Contact Picture of the Day
Images
Picture Archive
New images
Picture of the day
(2016-04-15)
Links
The LawDog Files
View From the Porch
Alex Mattingly
Smallest Minority
 
Individual Sponsors
Thrim LLC
©2024 by Ben Swenson.   All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
     Hosted by: