Hell or High Water

Remember my post about the furnace and wanting to stay awake in case the pipes froze? Well, it isn't the pipes freezing, you'd never really know - until they thaw. Which is what happened last night. I stayed awake late watching BBC shows on Youtube. Around 11:45, I went out to feed the annoying cat (see animal post) and I heard a hissing sound begin as I was turning around to go back inside. You see the weather had gone from freezing or well below, to about 40 degrees in a matter of hours. We had this ridiculous pipe situation - installed by the crack-heads who owned this house previously- in the stair well to the basement, where the furnace resides, is a pipe which is connected to the hose spigot for the back yard. It was wrapped in an insulating foam tube (except for a small line down the back, presumably where it was split to allow you to get the pipe foamy stuff onto the pipe. Well, that was where it cracked. Sending out an enormous stream of water, right into the stairwell and right into the basement. C. had fallen asleep while reading to S. and so I ran in to tell him. He wakes up hard so it was a struggle. He came out and got a pipe wrench and a shovel to dig to the shut-off valve in the front yard. He had built an igloo for S. right over the valve shut-off. While he was out there, he dropped the wrench in the snow and couldn't find it again. I was down the icy stairs, bucketing water. Then I ran inside and called my sister, S. Scared her half to death - late night calls do that. She said to call the fire department. Which I did. They rushed over, shut the valve off, cut the offending pipe off the house, installed a temporary faucet, vacuumed the basement full of 4-6 inches of water and then left. It was 2:30 before we got to sleep. Little S. slept through it all. The firemen tromping through the house, cutting the pipe off, running up and down the icy stairs with their wet-vacs, shouting, joking, me panicking. Her aunt and uncle showing up for moral support. Dear heavens. So, we are now the proud owners of a wet/dry vac and a nifty, hastily built awning for the back stairs - to prevent the ice dam that is melting out of our gutters from further flooding the basement and its nasty set of stairs. Some architect/50's home designer has a lot to answer for. Who in the heck would design such a crappy basement entrance? And yes, we are slackers, we should have replaced the cruddy pipe/spigot thingy long ago. Nothing like a swimming pool in your basement as a wake-up call!