It is rare, though, these days, to see temperatures drop below zero here. I'm not sure I have seen it happen in my thirty-seven years in residence. But so it was this time; ten inches of snow and five degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The airport recorded -9.
There is a weak spot in our system for such weather, and that is water. We do store plenty, but dislike the thought of broken pipes and such. Yes, they're wrapped, but still. We placed a heater in the wellhouse and another in the crawl space, ran the faucets and hoped for the best. We lasted two days after the lowest low, and the water stopped running. We shut down the pump and the hot water heater. We switched to the stored water and went on with our lives.
Our "weak point" in sunnier times |
Fortunately our cobbled-together above-ground system, while vulnerable, is also more easily adaptable than its underground predecessor.
I dismantled the side of the insulated hot box, disconnected the contractor's hose from the solar tank and pilfered its male-to-male adapter. Then I disconnected the other end of the hose in the washroom, where it feeds the hot water heater through a hose bibb, and, threading the adapter onto a hose remnant, connected the remnant in its place and threaded the other end of the remnant to the cold-water hose bibb over the laundry tub. Problem solved.
"My heroine!"
Music to my ears.
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Stony Run Farm: Life on One Acre