BRRRRR!

All week it has been very cold here. Last night it was -26C (that's -14F) when I had to venture out to drive The Boy home from his girlfriends. The car was not at all happy that I was trying to make it do anything in this weather. I was concerned at one point it would just refuse to take me any farther.

I sat for quite a while just to be able to see out the windshield. Even then I had to scrape the 'inside' just to see out. The clutch was sluggish and I felt like I was arm wrestling for the gears. Not to mention all the lights on the dash were going crazy. The open door indicator, even when the door was closed, and the fasten seat belt light when (you guessed it) I had my seat belt on.

The weather is not fit for humans or machinery. And that goes for pipes to. This is the second morning I have woken up to frozen pipes.

The first night of the really cold weather, the landlord calls and asks me to open up the hot water tap a trickle to keep it from freezing. That night I had nightmares of the drain getting clogged and me having a flood. All kinds of fun'ness. I once (once) lived in an apartment building but it was a nightmare. Before I went to bed, I would make sure nothing was turned on (ie:stove, iron, etc)and would double check my ashtrays to make sure there was nothing smoldering. Ok, so I am slightly OCD. Even after 10 minutes of checking and rechecking, I got no sleep at all worrying about who was checking all the other guys smoldering ashtrays. I had to move out. I just couldn't take the sleep deprivation.

So now I am in a house with just one other apartment, less worry. Or so I thought, except for the nightmare about being swept away at sea.

I wake up in the morning and there was no flood and the water was still running. So, I figure I can turn it off, right? Three hours later, no hot water. Frozen pipes. Three hours, that is all it took.

So, the landlord comes and borrows my little portable heater and heads to the basement. An hour or so later, the water is flowing again. What I am 'assuming' is that he has fixed the problem. I hate that word, assume. It never ends well. Sure enough, I wake up this morning to no hot water again.

The landlord just left, he is starting to make me nervous, suggesting that we leave an electric heater going in the crawlspace to keep the pipes warm.

Uh, and possibly burn the house down? There has got to be a better, more copacetic way to keep your pipes from freezing. One that doesn't involve me having nightmares.