Texas folks check-in....y’all good?

[dashDustin]

Gnarly week so far. Y’all managing? We’re in Leander. Been without water for a couple days, intermittent blackouts that now seem to be on a schedule so we can sort of work around them. Have not yet been able to get to a grocery store....which we need to make happen. The boys have managed to go through a week of food in 3 days.

Lots of finger pointing going on...regardless, I just hope this doesn’t happen again. Sucks being told to boil your water AFTER your water service has already been shut off. Which is perfect in the middle of a multi-day hard freeze.

[NorTX-Dave]

Up here west of Mineral Wells we've only had a few 30 minute-ish black outs...and just got a "boil the water" notice today due to frozen equipment at the local water treatment plant. The more heavily traveled roads are drying out and are easily passable, but the side streets will take some time. But next week....OH MAN, next week it will be in the 60's!!

P1020304 (2).jpg

[ides1056]

The longest we have been without power is nine days during an ice storm some years ago. Wood heat and a generator saw us through. Here in New England it's not out of the question this will happen, so we were prepared. Prior to this we had visited Ottawa after an ice event there flattened everything including power lines.

Climate change is all about change, so buckle up.

[monadnocky]

The longest we have been without power is nine days....

I'm guessing 2008? I remember driving across Route 2 through all of western MA a day after (Rte 9 in Southern VT was closed- I was travelling from Albany, NY to Keene, NH)- I'll never forget it, completely apocalyptic.
Stay safe, Texas people...

[j44ke]

I dunno. Seems like the time when you want the heat and power to be most dependable, is when you'd need it the most. Like when it is cold and dark. So step one: Build out stuff so it will work when it is cold and dark.

BTW the fun time with pipes is not when everything is frozen. It is when the temps go back up to 60F and all that ice plugging the cracks and fissures in your pipes melts. Your house (or municipal water treatment/pumping facility) becomes a fountain! Need to know where your main water cut-off valve is.

I ordered some t-shirts from Nao Tomii. He said he'd ship out next week. Why not? A few extra shekels down that way is a good thing.

Wish I could send down some warmth.

[Tom]

I think it was 2008. We were out of town and flew back into Albany a day or two afterward at night, seeing patches of lights here and there didn't totally register until we drove home and one side of the road had lights, the other didn't. Cresting the hill and looking down into the city it was totally black at 10pm. That's when I said "Uh oh."

The amusing part was that the wires along one side of my lot were down and laying across the road. People were driving back and forth over them, people were walking their dogs... I went in my back yard to check on stuff... and then after a couple of days when a neighbor up the road decided to light a fire in their fireplace and immediately had a chimney fire the Fire Department came. On the way out they came down my street and when they saw the wires slammed on their brakes. They got out, got on the radio and within fifteen minutes a guy from the power company in a pickup came and parked over the wires. I went out and said hi. He asked if I had been in my back yard. I said sure. He said don't do that again, these are live.

[Clean39T]

Climate change is all about change, so buckle up.

True story. Higher highs. Lower lows. And we're gonna need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.

[Clean39T]

I ordered some t-shirts from Nao Tomii. He said he'd ship out next week. Why not? A few extra shekels down that way is a good thing.

In addition to Tomii... gimme a short-list of makers from our industry down TX way that we could toss a little business to in these times...?

[PaMtbRider]

I called my State Farm insurance agent yesterday to make a policy change. She said they haven't been able to access their servers the last two days because of power outages in Texas. A very minor inconvenience, but just shows how big and wide this impact is. Hoping for the best for the people this is directly affecting.

[dashDustin]

I dunno. Seems like the time when you want the heat and power to be most dependable, is when you'd need it the most. Like when it is cold and dark. So step one: Build out stuff so it will work when it is cold and dark.

BTW the fun time with pipes is not when everything is frozen. It is when the temps go back up to 60F and all that ice plugging the cracks and fissures in your pipes melts. Your house (or municipal water treatment/pumping facility) becomes a fountain! Need to know where your main water cut-off valve is.

I ordered some t-shirts from Nao Tomii. He said he'd ship out next week. Why not? A few extra shekels down that way is a good thing.

Wish I could send down some warmth.

Pipes is major concern. Our faucets were dripping before the freeze hit and haven’t been shut since, despite the water being cut off. Exterior faucets were double covered. I don’t really know how it all works....but I’m gonna go shut the water off at the main here in an hour or so. Water seems to be coming back slowly for some folks in the area. Been suggested to kill it at the main and slowly open it up. Seems sensible to me. Through all this, wifey and I have both had to work and none of my deadlines have been pushed back. Which seems ridiculous to me.

[Mark Walberg]

Just northwest a bit from Dallas.
Starting Sunday night, no electrons most of the time.
House was 40 degrees in the morning.
We cooked pasta putanesca in the fireplace.
Essentially all of civilization is shut down here.
MUCH moreso than for Covid.
Essentially everything was closed except for a very few places.
The local MacDonalds had a line of 30 cars.
I went to work and no one was there, but there was water on the floor from the broken pipes.
Power came back on yesterday.
Bike riding in this snow is truly a blast though !
Snow Rider Just me.jpg

[johnmdesigner]

Ted flies to Cancun during the power outage.
Geez, it’s remarkable how much bullshit you’re willing to put up with from your elected officials.

[ides1056]

I recall seeing a tall building in Boston when I was in college that had frozen. I've had to repair burst pipes a few times, but to have an entire multi-story building turned into an icicle is impressive. Hate to think what the clean-up will involve when the week is over.

Ted Cruz, class act.

[Mark Walberg]

Ted flies to Cancun during the power outage.
Geez, it’s remarkable how much bullshit you’re willing to put up with from your elected officials.

I wouldn't trust Ted Crudz to pick up my garbage,
let alone hope that he'll make life better for me.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of others here who think otherwise.
Hopefully, this trip will be used against him effectively.

[johnmdesigner]

I wouldn't trust Ted Crudz to pick up my garbage,
let alone hope that he'll make life better for me.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of others here who think otherwise.
Hopefully, this trip will be used against him effectively.

Well OK.
And what about Abbot blaming the wind mills?
It sounds like you have a lot of housecleaning to do.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...nergy-1129045/

[Mark Walberg]

Well OK.
And what about Abbot blaming the wind mills?
It sounds like you have a lot of housecleaning to do.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...nergy-1129045/

Agreed. It is appalling here.

[defspace]

Fiiiiinally back online. Somehow we lost internet and water but not power. I assume we're on the same circuit as some sort of critical facility. We had a few refugees sleep over to stay warm (including a cat that decided my wheel bag looked like a comfy place for a nap).

One pipe broke and has been repaired. We're still without great water pressure, and I think we're still under a boil water notice anyway? We filled a bathtub for toilet-flushing water* and had to dip into the hurricane water supplies for drinking water.

My parents were out of power for 36 - 48 hours. It got down to 34deg inside the house. They're back with utilities and doing well.

Cruz and Abbott can go pound sand.
*it really is absurd how much clean, drinkable water gets flushed down the drain every time you flush a toilet.

[j44ke]

Pipes is major concern. Our faucets were dripping before the freeze hit and haven’t been shut since, despite the water being cut off. Exterior faucets were double covered. I don’t really know how it all works....but I’m gonna go shut the water off at the main here in an hour or so. Water seems to be coming back slowly for some folks in the area. Been suggested to kill it at the main and slowly open it up. Seems sensible to me. Through all this, wifey and I have both had to work and none of my deadlines have been pushed back. Which seems ridiculous to me.

I think the system itself is potentially going to show cracks - actual ones not metaphoric. So when thaw starts, you'll get intermittent or very low pressure flow from municipal service. And if there are breaks in the mains out across the city, inevitably that will introduce mud and sand into the pipe system, so you'll want to run taps or house bibs without screens to clean things out.

Do hot water heaters still burn out if empty or do they automatically shut off? I can't remember. In the old days you had to worry about them getting emptied by someone running the tap when the water was off and the elements would burn out.

Maybe State of Texas gov would like to have that sit down talk about secession just about now?

[dashDustin]

*it really is absurd how much clean, drinkable water gets flushed down the drain every time you flush a toilet.

I cannot believe how much work it took to get enough water to flush the toilet. I was thinking a gallon, max. Nope.

[thollandpe]

Always a good idea to throw the mains during a big outage, disconnect.

Open the main breaker and let all the streetlights and neighbors power up first. That way if there are a bunch of reclosings or voltage drops you and your motors are spared the drama. It would also make it easier on the substations, if more people did it.

I’ve never experienced an overpressure on my water lines, and that would have to be a big swing to actually hurt things, but it’s not a bad idea. The sediment you might see on startup is probably not dirt getting into the lines from a break, but sediment that was already in the lines loosened by a high flow condition. But you may as well let the neighbors deal with that too, since none of that sediment will come up your lateral if there’s no flow.

A flush is a good idea, because some of what gets knocked loose could be biofilm, and it does not take long for the chlorine residual to get used up in a dead-end lateral and start growing stuff.

And yeah, a toilet with more than a 1.6-gpm flush is an egregious waste of drinking water. If you ever want to be impressed with the science behind plumbing fixtures, check out Toto on the YouTube machine. They were always a fun booth to visit back when trade shows were a thing.