flashingreds...
cold, eh?
(2003-01-19, 3:07 p.m.)
I had no water Saturday morning. Or rather, only enough water left in the pipes to flush the toilet once, before an attempt to rinse the tea mug failed. When I�d stumbled in at one am and headed straight to the shower to wash the smothering layer of smoke from my skin and hair, all had been well. Sometime in the intervening hours, something went wrong.

It was bitterly cold Friday night�the coldest night yet this winter, and the brisk north wind sent wind chills down below zero. In four years in the country, the pipes had never frozen. It didn�t cross my mind, but in my fumbling confusion, I checked each of the faucets in my apartment.

No water downstairs in the main, presently vacant, part of the house, either. I called my landlord�s number. There, across the road, Wayne was dealing with frozen pipes in their kitchen, but they had water in the rest of their house. As I waited for someone to come over and have a look, I headed to the basement to look for signs of broken pipes.

Jodi met me downstairs. We found the water softener and looked for the pipe coming into the softener from outdoors. Everything looked dry under the porch, and though we were alarmed at seeing daylight filtering in through a sizable crack between the porch and the ground, we didn�t see any signs of moisture.

No emergency at least. Not for now.

She headed back out to report the news to her dad while I applied all the layers of warm clothes I could find. Tights, long underwear, warm-up pants, my dad�s 20-year-old down coat, thick wool socks, obligatory Gore-Tex boots and heavy gloves. By the time I made my way across the road, Meg had thrown down several bales from the hay mow and was off to empty the hay cart, so we could stack bales along the south side of their house, in hopes that the added insulation would help thaw out the kitchen pipes.

Wayne decided the wind was changing directions, so we put off that idea, instead rounding up barn cats to take them to the woodshop, where the woodstove would keep them warmer than the meager heating lamp in the barn. Then off to load the hay cart with wood to haul to the shop to feed the woodstove over the next few days. That task completed, Meg and I went indoors to heat up kettles of water to pour down the frozen cold water pipe under the sink.

In the meantime, Wayne saw that the pressure gauge on the water softener in my basement read zero, so no water was making it to the house. He switched off the circuit running the well, and then pulled the concrete cover off the pit nearest the house, a spot where the pipes historically have frozen. This pit was the site of the first pump for the house, which was run by windmill. Later another well just a bit farther east was added to the line, but when those became unusable, the present well was dug a bit farther southeast of that latest well. Pipes were simply extended each time, and they now run from the well through these empty pits and into the house.

Though the pipes in the pit were intact, he noticed frost hanging off the top of the concrete cover. Hoping that the problem spot was in this pit, he and Jodi rounded up an old kerosene heater, got it going, lowered it into the pit, and covered the hole most of the way, leaving enough room to bring in fresh oxygen to keep the fire going.

I packed my gym bag and headed back to sneak in a shower at the neighbors� house, by which time the kitchen pipes were back in order. With nothing to do but wait for the pipes to thaw, Meg, Jodi and I went into town to buy supplies�you know, books and food.

When we passed Wayne driving the Suburban alone on the main road as we headed home, we knew that couldn�t be a good sign. When we saw the end loader at the east house as we came down our road, no hope for an easy solution remained. I didn�t bother trying to go home. Clearly the problem hadn�t been in the first pit, but the next one.

The second pit is larger and is bordered by a thick hedge of unruly evergreens. Wayne had chained the lid of that pit to the loader, pulled it off, then climbed over the bushes and down inside the pit with a blowtorch, and tried to melt the frozen pipes. One pipe burst all over him, leaving him soaked. Once he was able to get out of the pit, he�d changed and headed toward town for parts.

By 7 pm, after a full day of working on the problem, he�d jury-rigged the pipes together with pieces of scraps he�d found, water was flowing, and we were all curled up around their living room, nibbling tiny veggie quiches and watching Antiques Roadshow.

I�d planned to spend the day nursing the hangover, cooking up JoJo�s famous split pea soup, reading and preparing for another night of debauchery.

Perhaps this was better.