We must have missed that memo… you know, the one about how to avoid FROZEN PIPES!

SO…. We woke up on Friday morning to find our pipes had frozen. For all you Californians, this means we had no water coming out of our faucets because somewhere, in our maze of pipes, there was a chunk of ice blocking the water from moving.

The news of the frozen pipe (which I found while trying to make coffee at 6am on Friday morning) came as a surprise to all of us. While it was ~17 degrees outside (BURRRRR!) it had been much colder during December and we hadn’t had any problems with freezing pipes. We quickly hopped on the Internet and did a search on “what to do if your pipes freeze.” There were lots of helpful sites (like this one from State Farm) and each of them had some simple tips - - things you can do to avoid pipes freezing in the first place. One of the tips was to leave a faucet dripping on nights when the temperature might drop below freezing. Now they tell us!

So we can’t flush our toilets, we have to turn off the radiant floor heat system (as it uses water to push heat through the floors, and we have no water), I can’t take a shower, and I had to make my coffee from bottled water (very cosmopolitan). We called a close friend, Jason, who is brilliant in terms of fixing things, and he walked us through the steps to turn off all the systems, check for leaks, etc. Once that was done, we called the plumber, who eventually came out and confirmed that yes, our pipes were in fact frozen. Brice went to Home Depot and bought an electric space heater to warm the crawl space, which in turn is how we were to defrost the frozen pipe.

In the meantime, I am going about my daily work, talking to editors and colleagues in many other states over the phone and via IM, and as I explain my current situation of frozen pipes to each of them, I started to see a pattern in their responses:

“Oh man, that sucks. I’ve heard you are supposed to let water drip out of your faucet when it’s freezing outside. That’s supposed to keep your pipes from freezing.”

“I’m really sorry. We leave the water dripping all night long, so we’ve never had our pipes freeze.”

“Where we used to live our pipes would freeze if we didn't drip the faucet all the time.”

“I thought you knew! You’re supposed to leave the water running constantly. Running water won’t freeze as easily as standing water”

“You should have left the water dripping, just a slow drip, that would have prevented your pipes from freezing.”

“Oh no, I remember our neighbors pipes froze and then burst when I was a kid. My mom always left the water dripping in the kitchen sink, so ours never froze.”

Thanks for the tips guys… Where was “Mr. Helpful with Tips for the kids from California” the day BEFORE our pipes froze??

Anyway… so Brice gets down into the crawl space, and sets up the heater. The plumber (and most of the sites on the Internet that recommended this method) said it should just take a short time for the heater to heat up the pipe enough to defrost. 2 hours later – no water. 4 hours later – no water. 6 hours later – no water. So I’m back on the Internet, searching for tips. There seems to be a general consensus that taking a blow-dryer to the pipes and trying to slowly warm them up is a good idea.

By 4:30 Friday night, Brice was relegated to the crawl space with my blow-dryer. While he was down there, our friends Eric and Nicole from across the street called to see if they could borrow a movie. I told them “Come on over, you can borrow a movie if I can borrow your blow-dryer!” They came over, and Eric headed down to the crawl space (with his blow-dryer) to find Brice.

Friends like Eric (and Jason) are invaluable - - willing to jump in head-first, and help out. Eric gave Brice a few key tips (like to flip-up the insulated covers to the air vents that were letting all our warm air under the house escape). Once the vents were covered, the crawl space started warming accordingly, and by the time we woke up the next morning, we had running water again! Brice checked for cracks and leaks, and we were in the clear.

We learned a lot from the experience… like to leave our faucet dripping to prevent freezing pipes, that coffee tastes really great when it’s made with bottled water, and the value of having good friends like Jason, Jennifer, Eric and Nicole, who were there when we needed them. …Live and learn. It’s all part of our Northern Idaho adventure!