frozen pipes

[juldea]

Diagnosis: the heat from the furnace to my house having been turned off, the pipes were allowed to sit in the cold and hence froze over (I don't understand the process involved that would have the gas-heat pipes freeze, since it was just those and not the hot water which is working fine, but I accept that it sounds reasonable.) Efforts are being made to unfreeze these pipes, and in the meantime I'm stuck huddled around space heaters.

Oh, for extra fun: I had one space heater of my own, but I borrowed another from hakamadare and chaiya. Of course it made sense to me to plug it into the same outlet as my computer, and flipped a breaker. ;) That has since been fixed and extension cords are being utilized to spread the power usage out over different circuits in the apartment.

Heh. Whee.

Comments

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

Sorry, about inducing frustration, especially in your situation. The problem is deciding what is insulting obvious, and what is useful new information. For instance, gas heating pipes (from the furnace to your radiators) are filled with hot water (or possibly, though I expect not, steam). It was these that froze. There is also a gas pipe from the street to your furnace which carries gas. I would have hesitated to include this information on the basis that it might be too insultingly simple. On the other hand, reverse labeling of outlets is an idea which I have never seen anyone else do, and which took me twenty years of messing with fuse boxes to figure out. And few people seem to have any idea how much current their appliances draw. So I thought I was truly adding new information. Sigh.

I answer questions like this frequently on the 'net, in a forum with complete newbies, and experienced professionals, and getting the right mix of information is always tough. Again, sorry that I missed in your case.

Thank You Kindly,

Corwyn

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I didn't actually get frustrated in this case - but I noticed that I felt a little bit of, "Duh, I know that, silly!" Also, I don't even feel that I can really defend this reaction I have, considering I'm aware that people have differing spheres and levels of knowledge and you have no way to really know which I have where. So no worries and no need to apologize, I'm not actually bothered! (Well, by this, at least.) :)

Glad to hear that my idea that I had worked out this morning of how the heat works was in fact the right idea. Score one for me!