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January, 2009

The last half of December was, um, interesting.

Things went OK with the Christmas display, fortunately, except for the fact that the temperature rose, the ground thawed and became really soft, followed by a strong wind that blew over some of the stakes holding up decorations, then promptly froze solid so when I came home after work there was no way to pound the stakes back into the ground. So I made some X bases for some of the spiral trees and left some other things on the ground.

House Problems

Then the temperature dropped precipitously and the wind picked up, to where the Sunday before Christmas it was -5 degrees with a 30 MPH wind, gusting to 45 MPH. (Conservatively. Officially they said 49 MPH.) So cold it would give you a headache in about 30 seconds. Wind chill calculations just don't tell you how cold that feels. Freezing rain in Ft. Wayne left 80,000 people without power just before the bottom dropped out. Bursting pipes ruined things at various colleges and businesses. But back to Sunday.

That morning, Kathy reported that the cold water to the washing machine was frozen. The laundry room had been closed off -- why heat it? (Because the pipes freeze, that's why!) Pipes on the inside of the room, not inside the wall. Thawed it out with the hair dryer. Problem was the wind coming in the dryer vent, so we sealed that off with a baggie and vented the dryer indoors. (You're not supposed to do that, but hey, it's so dry in the house we have to run a power humidifier anyhow.)

Rich narrated the Christmas program at church that evening but forbade Kathy to go out with cookies. Just let the computer do its thing with the Christmas lights and stay indoors. Bare flesh freezes in a little over a minute in those conditions. When Rich got home, Kathy announced that the water in her bathroom was frozen. So Rich bundled up and wriggled down under the house with the hair dryer. Going through the little opening, his jacket and shirt were up in his armpits by the time he got down there. And then, after clothing adjustments were made after the "wardrobe failure", Kathy handed down the light, hair dryer, etc. Oh, forgot the quick but very miserable trip out to the barn to get the remainder of the fiberglass insulation from last summer. Anyway, Kathy fed that down through the opening (about 10 ft of it) and Rich used it to cut down the wind velocity coming in through the foundation. The cobwebs were waving gently in the 5-below "breeze" propelled by 40 MPH winds outside.

Then came the actual thawing of the pipes. This took a couple of hours, during which time Kathy found an "embossing gun", which uses 1/4 the power of a hair dryer but concentrated the heat, making the copper pipes actually warm to the touch, like about 60 degrees warm. After removing the pipe insulation we put on last summer, it was heat it up inch by inch starting with the last faucet on the line that worked. Finally the water would run into the toilet tank, a minor triumph, then on to the bathtub inch by inch. Still no water. Pipe was warm all the way, no chance of ice blockage. Had to be in the wall. Wriggle out of jacket, pass up all the tools, wriggle through trapdoor (almost getting stuck). Got to work on the topside.

Kathy: There's no access panel.
Rich: Where you reckon you'd like one?

Half an hour later, after finding a utility knife and cutting through the wallboard, we discovered why the bathtub won't stay warm for more than a few minutes. No insulation, plus gaps around the pipes where they come through the floor. Fortunately, we still have a couple of feet of fiberglass insulation left. Unfortunately it's out in the barn. (This is about 11:00 PM by now.) Kathy volunteered to go get it. She claims she's never been so cold in her life. I believe it. The only thing to compare it to is a commercial freezer, one of those that quick-freezes beef with a blast of subzero air. Well it's about half a minute each way to & from the barn so no real harm done, but it's painful. Tucked the insulation into the gaps and around the pipes, and just the vibrations from that, plus the warmer air from the bathroom caused the ice to let go. Yay! But now we have a hole in the wall to fix.

Now we turned to the other problem. The house was down to about 50 degrees, Kathy's bathroom down to 42. Heat pump wasn't working. Emergency heat did nothing. Turned up the temperature of the waterbed, put more covers on, huddled with all three cats, got some sleep interrupted by getting up to make sure all the faucets were still dripping. Rich was really chilled so attempted to take a hot shower. Attempted. The shower drain was frozen solid so that was cut short when the water got up almost to the lip of the shower. While drying off, Rich heard a clunk and gurgle and it started draining. At least it was just the trap that was frozen.

In the morning, called the folks who installed the heat pump back in '91. (We were told by the realtor that the heat pump was 3 years old. Realtors can't do math. Second time we've been, um, "misled" about a heating system in as many houses in a row.) Anyhow, they were out fixing other people's systems. Finally, after the fourth call, about 4:00 PM, the "old man", retired but the founder of the business, tossed his tools in his car trunk and came out. Found a breaker on the inside unit that was off, which was why emergency heat didn't work, and then went outside in the terrible cold (maybe +10 by then, still windy) and fixed the outside unit.

Meanwhile, Rich had built our first fire in the fireplace using wood scraps from the shop, which gave off some heat but not much. He was huddled by the fire with his stocking cap, jacket and gloves on. He had shivered uncontrollably after being under the house and it took almost a day to recover. (Hey, try lying down in a sub-freezing crawl space for a couple of hours!) That hot shower would have helped had it been longer.

Next morning, much rejoicing. Kathy's bathroom is the warmest room in the house and we were toasty.

Guess I didn't mention that son Jon had arrived late Saturday night. He was in a bedroom with electric baseboard heat, and he was tired, so he slept through much of this rigamarole. At least that room was livable.

Daughter Kriss was coming for Christmas. Flight from Boston to Indianapolis was cancelled, so she finally flew out on Tuesday, which was fine, except that during the layover in Detroit they would de-ice the plane and the runway would ice over. They would de-ice the runway and the plane would ice up. Finally they got them both de-iced at the same time and came on to Indy. The new airport is nice. We parked in the "cell phone" lot, free but about a mile from the terminal. When Kriss texted Jon that she was waiting, we pulled out and picked her up at the terminal. Great arrangement.

Photos courtesy Indianapolis Star

Of course, Kriss was starving as were we by 2:00 or so, so we stopped at a Cracker Barrel and had a really big lunch. Good thing, too. It started to rain and freeze. Jon had his computer/cell phone/GPS all connected up and was able to find out that the Interstate was totally closed between us and our exit, so he navigated us (slowly) through town and out into the country, avoiding the traffic jams. Saw the pictures on the 11:00 news: Semitrailer sideways across all lanes.

We started from the restaurant at about 3:00 and arrived home about 8:30. We took a wrong turn or two but the GPS got us back onto a reasonable route. We knew the road was slick (we were doing about 20) when we came to a sanding truck that was sideways, half on the road and half on some guy's lawn. We were down to 5 MPH by then and you could have skated. Jon was keeping track of the weather and routed us out from under the "pink stuff" as they show it on the weather map, but then we were on road that had endured the freezing rain and so we still held it down to about 30 MPH. Sent up big plumes of slush on both sides as we went. Car is a mess but no dents or other damage, better than the cars in the ditch, against the barriers, backwards, and generally messed up along the Interstate.

Computer had started and run the Christmas Tree program right on time, but oddly enough we don't think too many people came to see the program. We wouldn't know, though....

Had a great visit. Mother and daughter had a great time talking all the way back. Father and son weren't so sociable, trying to dodge the worst of the storm. Main roads were a disaster, country roads were slick as grease, but we made it.

Day before Christmas. Rich and Jon set out to go to Ft. Wayne in the pickup. Kathy and Kriss were happily preparing food for Christmas dinner.

A couple of miles north of town, engine started missing and Check Engine light started blinking which means "We got trouble, better shut down real soon." Usually means unburned gasoline is coming through in large quantities, which is logical if one cylinder isn't firing. That will ruin the catalytic converter in a big hurry ($$$$$$$). Turned around, light was on but stopped blinking at least in a couple of hundred yards. Jon just happened to know that Autozone (USEFUL TIP) has a gadget that can read your car's computer and they'll do it free most places. (Dealers charge around $100.00 to do this simple operation.) So we just happen to have an Autozone where our street (9th) intersects the main road. So we stopped there and found that cylinder 7 had been missing. It's on the right-hand side where we had splashed through a large puddle. (Lots of large puddles from the rain/freezing rain the day before.)

Well, we didn't make it to Ft. Wayne, so Kathy got a new doorknob for Christmas. Seriously! We put back the door to our "music room" because of the cold. The old door used to be an outside door years ago, had a deadbolt and the knob had a lock. Someone had put black tape over all of the keyholes and the twisty lock thing on the knob. It was really sort of ugly, so Rich removed the old hardware, put a nice round brass plate over the deadbolt hole, new passage doorknobs without locks and it looks *so* much better.

Oh -- so what did Rich get? A bed liner for the pickup, and a heated keyboard from daughter Kriss.

Kathy will get a new bathroom upstairs, by the way, just not in time for Christmas.

Christmas

So the four of us had Christmas dinner together, first time in many years. Kriss' husband was taking his turn at the hospital over Christmas so wasn't with us. He was missed. But y'know, people get sick and hurt over Christmas, maybe worse than other days. Kriss regaled us with the story of Pink Chicago during dinner. We've heard that laughter is good for the digestion.

Final tally for the Musical Christmas Tree: 550 carloads more or less, representing about 1500 people. Kathy baked 105 dozen cookies for the season; on Christmas night she was down to 1 cookie and a car drove in with just 1 person in it (somewhat unusual) so she got rid of the last one. After that, we just handed them a program and wished them Merry Christmas.

Some nights, like Christmas, were about 30 degrees and no wind, actually rather pleasant compared to 28 with a 25-mile wind; but even then we can dress for it. That night of 5 below, gusts to 45 was brutal. We didn't hand out brochures or count the cars on the really severe nights.

We bought a couple of those "police" flashlights with the orange cone, sort of like those toy "light sabers". We also bought orange safety vests (like $5.00 at Wal-Mart) and put reflective tape on them. Whatever else, they could see us. Next year I'm going to have two of those flashlights like the airline ground crew does.

When we took daughter Kriss back to the airport it wasn't slick, just foggy. Really foggy. Not as bad as those fogs on Dayton Mountain way back in the 70s, but bad enough. Kriss' flight couldn't get in. We left her at the airport and moseyed back home. Slowly. Rich and son Jon had hit the Lowes in Marion (75% off Christmas items) and the Lowes and Menards in Ft. Wayne (finally made it!) on Friday morning, then we all checked the Menards and Lowes in Carmel just before they closed on the way back from the airport (used some of the donations to buy stuff on sale -- people are very generous). Anyway, Kriss called after we got home, "Hi, Dad, we're boarding now. Gotta run!" Ha! Fooled us! They got on the plane, locked the doors, did the safety thing, and ran out of time. FAA rules, crew can only work so long at a time so they had to take a 10-hour break or some such. Kriss finally made it home sometime after lunch Saturday. Two minutes faster and they could have left that night, but with the fog the plane had been diverted until conditions improved, etc. etc.

The three of us worked like Trojans (as my mother used to say) getting the Christmas display down and put away on Saturday. Temp was over 60 degrees but the wind was about 20-25 MPH so we didn't go up and get down the high stuff. Ground thawed and was a sea of mud, but the stakes came out of the ground easily; otherwise we would have had to wait until March.

The following Monday, friends Dan and Lisa came over and we took down the tree. Wind was calm in the morning, so we went out before breakfast and took down the star, which is like unto a kite when it's windy. Temperature that afternoon was in the 40s with a stiff breeze, but not too bad for working outside. Got the last part of the main frame detached from the house and disassembled at sundown when it started to get really cold, like 15 degrees colder at 6 than it was at 4 according to weather.com. Kathy and Lisa had prepared a good dinner so we sat and talked until sometime after 8:00. Those are the really good times, having warm fellowship and good conversations with friends.

New Year's Eve day, the crew came to replace the window in the library/TV room. They were scheduled for February but didn't have work to do on the 31st, so they came over. Window opening was actually out of square so it took a while to do the job. Kathy fixed lunch for them.

Click for 4 Meg Quicktime movie of this

Got really cold in the middle of January. (How cold was it? Kathy threw out a bucket of scrub water, and when the ice hit the ground it was still warm. You had to ask!) Seriously, it was like zero, plus or minus about 12 degrees for several days. Crawled back under the house and put electric heating tape on the pipes nearest the outer wall.

Had a lot of ice, drove 20MPH to and from work. Lots of tire tracks going out onto people's lawns, out in the fields and so on. Kathy got a little movie of the drifting snow from the window. (Click on photo. Needs Quicktime) Everybody who has 4-wheel drive uses it, if only to get back onto the road after they slide off. And then there are the *nuts* who drive 50 MPH on glare ice. Well, there isn't much crime in this weather and the wrecks give the police something to do. Got so bad in Ft. Wayne that they were telling people if you can still drive the car and no one is hurt, just exchange insurance information and go home, we're busy with serious accidents.