Thaw

We eventually thawed out from the blizzard but it was staying really cold at night.  It was in fact cold enough that our pipes stayed frozen pretty much until March.  Towards the end of the winter it got cold enough that pipes froze and burst all over the city.  In fact the sprinkler pipes at my work burst and brought down a ceiling.  During that time our pipes at the Aistream were still frozen, not much had changed about that until the thaw.  Last winter we'd gotten away with our pipes intact and we had just assumed we would this winter too.  Not so.  Remember that there is an oil heater running off an extension cord plugged into a surge protector in the bathroom and that's where all of the pipes are.  So it seemed like a good idea at the time and I'd still run it the same way this winter if I had to.

I had come home from an overnight shift and it was still dark and cold outside when I went to bed.  At approximately ten am or so I awoke feeling warm like the sun was shining in on me.  It felt all warm and cozy so I just kept my eyes closed and hoped I'd fall back asleep.  I then became aware of something, an odd noise keeping me awake.  It sounded like a pressure washer in the bathroom or behind the trailer.  So I leaned over the side of the bunk and waited for my eyes to adjust.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  The bathroom was flooding, and the flood was creeping up the sides of the surge protector.  I ran outside and opened the trunk first just so I'd know what had gone wrong.  Was it a fitting (we can fix that) or was it a burst pipe (we can't fix that)?  I could tell that it was a PVC pressure fitting that twisted on and off the copper, but I couldn't twist it down tight enough to stop the high pressure spray that was hitting me in the face and spraying into the trailer, so I just turned off the water and cleaned up inside, the surge protector was unharmed and nothing shorted out.