As some of you know, we had below zero temps for a few days and half of our water pipes froze. The house is 150 years old and nicely restored and the basement is not too scary. Actually, the original part of the house has the monster sized furnace and is always temperate, and that is where most of our pipes are. But the studio additon is younger, about 70 years old, and not as solid or as well insulated. It was the studio pipes that froze. Those pipes go out from the main basement in a cleverly built tube which has its own heat vent. Super smart, having the pipes warmed by extra hot air from the furnace, but something went wrong. If we ever have extended below zero temps I will leave the tap running, but nothing had frozen in 5 years.
Anyway, you cannot get at the pipes without tearing something apart, but there is that nasty hole in the wall pictured there. So I devised a clever hair-dryer-light gizmo on a ski and slid it into the hole and dang, can you belive, I got things thawed properly???
Clever: c'est moi :)
you are clever and Penny knows it!
ReplyDeleteholy dogs more like!!!
ReplyDeleteI assume that is a celebratory dog dance!!
My house was built about 1860-65.
The extension was built in 1972 and that is the weak point! (I extended the extension a little in 2006 and that is warmer!!)
They even put a flat roof on it!!!!
(a pitched roof is the long term plan)
That was way clever, that gizmo, and it looks like Penny is doing the "I have a smart dad" wiggle.
ReplyDeletePenny does the HAPPY DINNER DANCE every day. cracks me up and makes for a good phot shoot :)
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised Maude did not have to come home & fix it. Good job, Gary!
ReplyDeleteWe should all be so excited for dinner.
ReplyDeleteIt must be a guy thing. And yes, you guys are pretty clever sometimes. A couple weeks ago the pipe to the shower was frozen. So hubby did the hairdryer thing and in a half hour we had water. Whew.
ReplyDeletenifty idea! now you just gotta catch that varmint in the walls.
ReplyDeleteHere's to good old fashioned American ingenuity.
ReplyDelete"Your hairdryer, not just for drying pots anymore". ;)
ReplyDeleteMCGYVER!
ReplyDeleteWe shall refer to you as: McGuyver!!!
ReplyDeletePenny is not the least bit shy is she?
Penny has a totally loveable belly :)
ReplyDeleteyou have a freakishly long and scary garbled spam comment here. Its kinda funny though.... But more to the point, That hairdryer/light gizmo is the bomb! hairdryers are the potters best friend!
ReplyDeleteAh yes, the hair dryer gizmos..lol :) remember them well. lol :) One has to do what one has to do. I am suprised that that gizmo has not been on a TV infomercial. lol lol :)
ReplyDeleteLove the photos of Penny, waiting for her "Yappy Meal"! lol lol :) She is such a "ham" for the camera. Gotta love that girlie dog, she is the best! :)
Spike would probably get beaten up by the mouse! lol lol :)
Ingenious contraption. Whoo!
ReplyDeleteIf only I'd known!
ReplyDeleteI could have referred my winter call-outs to you!
Now I'll have to add a ski to my plumbing toolkit!
I'm not at all surprised, though, at this latest ingenuity. Nobody who makes pots like you do was ever going to be beaten by a frozen pipe in an inaccessible place.
You've got a serious bunch of wires going on there Gary!
ReplyDeleteOnly once did we ever have to use a hair dryer when we put heat out here in/on the 'back porch' room. Never had to use a ski though...lol.
You are a smartie! Thank goodness you didn't duct tape a blow torch to the extension!! You know how many people up here in Alaska burn their houses down trying to thaw pipes the jackass way?!
ReplyDeleteIngenious! Are you sure you're not really an engineer?!
ReplyDelete