We just moved to south Texas in May.  When we got here, San Antonio proceeded to have the hottest summer in the history of the city.  Global Warming!!!  There were almost 60 days with temperatures hitting 100 degrees or hotter and we only saw 1.48” of rain in June, July, and August.

Then the seasons turned and it became fall, which in turn, like every year, led to winter.  Of course, now that we’re in winter, it’s become one of the coldest winters in San Antonio history.  It got down to 16 degrees the other night. 

When I woke up for my pre-dawn urination sleep-break, I stumbled into the rest room and flushed the toilet.. and it did not fill back up correctly.  Then I turned the faucet on and nothing came out of it.  Blasted… the cold night had frozen a pipe.  This was around 4:45am, so I go into a sort of panic mode and try to figure out what to do.  Just like any emergency situation, I immediately sat down and searched Google.  “Frozen pipes” and “How do I tell where my pipes are frozen?” and “How to thaw pipes” and Google responded with a whole bunch of instructions that I didn’t quite know what to do with.

Stunning woke up and freaked out herself.  She was throwing a baby shower that day and with no water the whole “Can I just get a glass of water?” request from guests would be difficult… as would the “Where’s your bathroom?”  (I thought it would be cool if she handed the guest a roll of toilet paper and then proceeded to tell them how to get to the corner of the yard, but she wasn’t pleased with that idea.)

Having a frozen pipe is one thing… all you have to do is thaw it.  However, when you thaw it, you know you have a problem when you see water coming from a large gaping crack in the pipe.  Yep, that happened to us too.  We weren’t the only ones dealing with this, so the plumbers were expensive and took a long time to get to us. 

We left the water on during the baby shower with a good amount of duct tape surrounding the crack to try and slow the water down some.  The duct tape didn’t work very well, but at least we had running water (as mentioned it never actually stopped running for fear it would cause greater pressure on the cracked pipe) for the 25 females that arrived at the house.

Coming from Omaha, frozen pipes aren’t something you really deal with often.  In Omaha, they prepare for cold weather by burying things.  I guess in San Antonio, builders don’t realize that it can get cold.  Shame on them.  Anyway, the pipe is fixed and now I leave my faucets with a steady drip when I go to bed.