Frozen Water Pipes!

So, if you were ever a non-believer (or think this would never happen to you), when it came to letting your water drip over night so your pipes don't freeze, please learn from us. It can happen no matter how well you think your pipes are insulated.

We woke up this morning (first day back to school after Christmas break)to NO water. No even a trickle could be found anywhere. Now,apparently John knew of the no water as early as 5:30am, but forgot to let me know before he left off to work. He was making a peanut butter and honey sandwich for Ethan's lunch and spilled honey on the floor,went to clean it found no water so he just wiped it with a dry paper towel (should say smear it). Now the rest of us get up about 7-7:30am, kids went to use the bathroom and lo and behold no water! Katie who likes to shower EVERY morning, was wondering "how am I suppose to shower"? I told her going one day will be fine. Then she came up with the brilliant idea of using wet wipes (and even though Ben is potty trained, we still has those useful things still around). So off into the shower (why you ask, did she need to do it in the shower? Well she is 8 is my only response)she went with a wet wipe.

In the meantime, I call John and find out he knew we had no water (could have smacked him if he was closer!)for hours. I then call my neighbor to see if they have water, to see if it could be a main water leak. Well, they had water so we knew it was most likely just us. Call was then placed to the public water works department, they would send someone right out. He actually got here quite quickly, but to my dismay we are told that our pipes were frozen somewhere on "our side", and we needed to call a plumber.

Six more calls later to various plumbers, I finally find a place that can come within two hours and will do a free estimate. While waiting, John comes home to see what he can do to help. Of course there really isn't much he can do. He does though get some water from the water heater to dump into the toilet tank so we can have one more flush.

Finally, the plumber comes! He needs to see where our water comes into the house. Of course this is located in the messiest room in the house, Ethan's room. There is where he finds the frozen pipe, but doesn't know how far it is frozen up unless he cuts into the wall.Plus, being that our house is only 6 years old we have pex pipes and he can't heat them the traditional way,he needs to use a blow torch at the metal coupling's. We (the plumber and I) call John to tell him what was going on and what we needed to do to fix it. John doesn't like the idea of someone cutting into our walls wants me to go by a space heater and point it at the wall and hope that will take care of the problem, until I remind him WE HAVE NO WATER! Even the plumber admits that a space heater may not do the job and if it does, there is no guarantee how long it would take. Thank goodness John had a change of heart and lets the plumber do his work. 25 minutes later, and a huge cut in Ethan's wall plus the price tag of over $200 we now have water. Believe me I am not complaining, it could have been worse. We are luckily that no pipe had burst in the process of the whole adventure. So like I said I am not complaining, but a FYI if you want to make a lot of money and have probably the best job security become a plumber! Oh yes and about the honey? Well I stepped into it without knowing about it and ended up with some VERY sticky socks and when I mentioned my annoyance of the kids spilling and not cleaning up John then confessed what it was and that it was him. Thankfully I hadn't gotten mad at the kids for it by then.