T w e n t y S i d e d

So the latest Ice Storm hit my area last Friday. Well, Friday before last by the time you read this. I used quotes in the title not to diminish the effect of the storm, but only to point out that for *my* area anyway, this wasn’t as bad as the previous bad ice storm in 2021. There were two main differences, unfortunately neither of which was the preparedness of the state of Texas. In fact many areas *did* lose power for days as expected. Where I live it wasn’t overly severe. We have our own water well, and I placed three heat lamps in the well house pointing at the above-ground portion of the plumbing. This kept our water going even down to 30 degrees below freezing. But the important thing out of our hands was the power supply. We are in a rural area, so most power is carried above ground on power lines. In 2021 we had heavy precipitation before the freezing weather hit, *and* during the early hours of the freeze, so the lines were heavy with ice. THEN we also had heavy wind, which subsequently *broke* all those really heavy lines. This time the precipitation was light and we never had heavy wind during the storm. Here, anyway. So we never lost power. Unfortunately, we *did* still have many breakages that caused several days of problems. Which is why I didn’t publish anything last week. Massive stress levels, and all that.

(Note: none of the pictures used are mine this time. They’re all stock, clip-art, or otherwise made publicly available.)

My spouse got home from work not long after the actual precipitation (as opposed to fog and mist, which we had all day) started. They smoke, and the driver’s window picked that exact moment to not roll up all the way. I couldn’t find a way to get it to work, either; so we taped a trash bag to the inside of the window to keep as much moisture out of the cabin as possible. Considering we were heading into the weekend and into a storm that was expected to shut businesses down until the following week, there wasn’t anything we could do about it. We had a bunch of large logs for the fireplace ready, so I got a fire going. A few hours later I noticed that it was getting colder in the house. Like, faster than it should have been even with the dropping temperature. That was when I realized the central gas furnace wasn’t blowing hot air. Now, we had our big propane tank (500 gallons; not unusual in our rural area) filled in early December. We shouldn’t have been out of propane. Sure enough, the automatic pilot would light, but the flames would never increase like they should to actually blow hot air. And, I could hear a kind of popping or poofing sound when the burner tried to open up. I tried resetting the furnace a couple of times, and eventually the pilot kicked on then went out immediately. I went to our gas hot water heater, and it *looked* like the pilot had gone out as well. The weather was thoroughly miserable at this point, and you have to be careful messing around with propane…so I turned the lines off. And we were out of hot water for most of the house and heating in the central area. Right at the beginning of a sub-freezing weekend.

This increased how fast wood was burned in the fireplace. Although one of the biggest logs kept the fire going through the night, the fireplace still only heats an area of about 20 square feet in front of the fire. It *is* a real fireplace, but it’s built to an older standard (in fact, I suspect it would be illegal in most urban areas now) and mostly looks nice. That we can get usable heat out of it is a bonus. The temperature in the house was under 50 degrees Fahrenheit by Saturday morning. One bathroom has its own electric water heater, so we did still have hot water when we needed it. I got some more firewood; hopefully enough to make it until Monday. We still had our water supply, but the next few days were only supposed to get colder. Later in the day I found an electric space heater that had not been working, cleaned it up and was able to get it functioning correctly. I put this in my office, so we actually had space heaters in the bedrooms and my office. So we could actually stay warm. Even though the temperature kept dropping, we were able to stay comfortable. On Sunday we learned almost everything would be closed down on Monday, as well. Monday night was meant to be the coldest temperature we would reach. I had attempted to get the propane provider to come out on Saturday, but no one was available. Understandable.

On Monday I scheduled the car repair for Tuesday. I wouldn’t be available myself as I was taking my parents to doctors’ appointments to check on my Dad’s healing from surgery. (He is healing well, showing some improvement, and was told to take it easy and NOT DRIVE. So of course by *this* weekend he was insisting on driving and claiming no one had told him not to. Which doesn’t support his improvement at all. He had been doing very good on recall. I have not ruled out that he’s just being stubborn and problematic, though.) I also discovered, thankfully; we were NOT out of propane. The tank had exactly what it should have had in it. So I turned the gas back on for the hot water heater and lit the pilot. It caught the first try, which is unusual. Lighting this pilot usually takes several minutes, although that’s mostly because I’m impatient and don’t wait long enough for the line to fill up. So, that took us back to the possibility that the gas furnace was the problem. But it also started first try and began blowing hot air. I don’t know what the problem was on Friday. The only thing I’m pretty sure about is that the propane line itself didn’t freeze. At least by the numbers. You usually have to get to around 45 degrees below zero to allow propane to freeze, and we were still about 40 degrees above that. If I misunderstood and it’s 45 degrees below freezing, we were still over ten degrees higher. So, I’m pretty sure the line didn’t freeze. It does get cold enough to freeze propane further north, but that would be unusual here. Since I don’t know what happened and the propane isn’t leaking, I just called it “good” and moved on. Hot water was working and all the heat was working.

We started some laundry and I carefully drove into town to run some errands. By the time I made it home it was clear something was choking off the water to the clothes washer. I shut it down and assumed there must be some debris in the water line that got kicked up when the hot water was reheated. I turned the water inlet faucets off, disconnected the hoses and cleaned the intake filters…which weren’t that dirty really. Hooked it all up, started the washer, then realized I hadn’t turned the water supply back on. When I did, I was pretty sure no water was coming through. Disconnected everything again, turned the faucets on, and no water came out. Clearly no water was running anywhere near; I couldn’t hear anything. I figured the lines must have frozen. How these specific lines would freeze but nothing else was affected is pretty simple: we hadn’t had severe wind, but there was a strong breeze from the northeast. These two water lines are *in the wall,* not under the house entirely, on the northeast corner. If any lines would freeze in this storm, it was these two. I told everyone we would just have to wait for these lines to thaw and it probably wouldn’t take long.

They did thaw a few hours later, revealing that the cold water line was busted. While I was checking on my parents, water started spewing from around the inset plastic box the faucets were mounted in. I walked a family member through turning the master supply of water off, then called a plumber while the rest of the family mopped up the mess in the laundry room. It was after hours but I was able to get on the repair list for Tuesday morning. And *now finally* we were actually out of water *for real.*

Thankfully the plumbers arrived first thing on Tuesday. Repairing the line took about 2 1/2 hours. I turned the water supply back on, got the hoses connected, and cleared all the lines of any debris. The cold water supply was still very slow, so in an effort to clean the inlet filters I broke them. Sorry Not Sorry. The cold water fills REALLY FAST now. And I mean, the job of the washer is to get rid of debris, right? Now it just has to get rid of the mineral deposits that fill our water supply, too. I took my parents to the doctor after that, and the rest of the family got the car to the shop that afternoon. Workplaces were closed again, because the roads still weren’t completely cleared. By that evening everything looked good. The mechanic had to replace the driver’s window regulator; the car was ready Thursday. That was the first thing that broke the previous Friday, so in all we had about 7 days of stress. I think I handled it much better than I could have, or used to. But at the same time, of course, I was wholly preoccupied with “what would break next.” That wasn’t very healthy. I did realize what was going on Saturday, if I remember correctly. It helped my mental condition briefly when I had to turn off gas, and that’s when I realized I was WAITING for something to break because I knew what to do when I had no other options. And, of course, in hindsight; I might have been able to get gas going again at least Saturday or Sunday morning; earlier than I did. I made assumptions about what was going on. That’s on top of feeling at least momentary relief not having to wait for heat or water to go out.

But the important lesson is that I realized what was happening and was able to start addressing it. “Knowing is half the battle,” as they say; but I would rephrase it as “Self Awareness.” Something like that. “Knowing” encompasses a larger, and mostly different set of circumstances. Like “knowing” not to jump over a downed power line, for example. “Self Awareness” speaks specifically to *knowing* you are doing something mentally. Most of us don’t think about. More than used to, to be sure. But still, most don’t “know” that is important.

I will be able to start building a new computer tomorrow, hopefully. I have a new case and case fans, a new CPU cooler, and a new motherboard arriving tomorrow. I already have a 1000 watt Corsair power supply. Hopefully the current CPU and GPU are both undamaged. For the money I’m willing to spend, I would only be seeing around a 10% improvement if they had to be replaced. I will also be using the 16GB of RAM I already have (DDR4 3000) and the current system NVMe M.2 and SATA hard drive. Unless something else is damaged, the first replacement will be another NVMe M.2 (PCIe 4.0) to replace the SATA hard drive. I doubt anyone reading needs the advice, but if you want more speed out of your system, first replace any hard drive that runs the OS or Apps with an NVMe if it’s on a hard drive, and second upgrade your RAM to 16GB or more if you have less. This is a bit of a challenge if you’re already using DDR5 RAM, as that spec is in demand and in short supply. You can spend as much for 16GB or 32GB as you would for a decent computer. DDR4 is a bit better. And yes, there are all sorts of upgrade caveats depending on your particular situation.

That’s it for now, see you all next week!

Paige Francis He/him