Carly and her husband bought a cute city house that needs a lot of TLC a few years ago. The house has some nice features, but it has been a source of frustration for Carly as well. Right after they bought the house, many shingles went flying off in a windstorm and they had to submit an insurance claim for a new roof. There was also a BIG plumbing issue in the bath upstairs that ended not only with a mess in the bathroom, but also the ceiling of the living room falling down!
Carly has sworn that if they move from THIS house, she will have Mark personally inspect any house they might choose next time! She hopes that his eye would catch any BIG jobs that she and her husband might have overlooked!
Back to situation at hand....The kitchen of this house has a little part that "jogs out" from the back of the house. UNfotunately, this is where the plumbing for the kitchen sink is housed. Being an OLD house, the insulation in this particular area was, shall we say, skimpy? Carly has had problems with her hot water pipe being frozen twice in the past week or two. So, she called because, she needed Ben!
Carly has pipe heaters on both of the kitchen pipes, as this has been a problem since purchasing the house. The hot water heater apparently quit working. This normally would not have been a problem, but they had the furnace replaced a couple of years ago, and the cold air plenum now runs in front of the outlet where Carly plugs the heaters in! The ONLY access to this area is...to remove a panel (that Ben and Carly put up) on the bottom of the area that jogs out!
We arrived at Carly's with a tarp (so they wouldn't have to lie in the snow on their backs!) and a few tools. Within about an hour, Carly and Ben had the job finished. It was a bit of a bone-chilling job, but they were able to work quickly, as they have removed and replaced this panel a couple of times.
Michelle took the pictures. You can see that there isn't a whole lot of space under this "nook" where they were working!
The GREAT news is that within minutes, the heater had warmed the pipe to the point that the hot water was running! Carly's daughter, Sarah, came out to announce that the water was moving freely! Hurrah!!!
Carly called later in the day and told me that she was so chilled from this little "exercise" that she went inside, donned her jammies and hid in bed till she warmed back up again!
We stopped at Roadhouse Grill on our way home and grabbed sandwiches. The bummer was that the food was good and plentiful, but it was so COLD in the restaurant, we were unable to even remove our coats! Yikes!
The weatherman is predicting a cold snap with highs only of about 10 or 15 degrees into next week. I am SO glad we were able to get that plumbing problem resolved now instead of when the temps dropped. At least it was in the 20's as they worked yesterday!
1 comment:
I hope her pipes don't freeze again this weekend. It is supposed to be pretty cold. Ok now, fun's over.....I'm ready for summer!!
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