Stay safe you southern boys

I've been going out to the pool and hot tub and punching a series of 2' holes every 10-12 feet to relieve pressure on walls and tiles. I also placed 2 liter coke bottles down into the skimmers, weighted with pebbles so that the expansion won't damage the skimmer wells. I had a tech come out earlier and drain the pumps, filters, etc. We'll see what I end up with.

My boat on the other hand has no power. I had the heat on inside but those pipes have frozen and a friend went and turned off the units and pump. I'm still worried the water in the units are going to split them wide open.
 
We are at 0, with windchills around -10. Lost power about an 90 minutes ago. Gets cold fast in the house. We have a high efficiency gas furnace which was pretty much running full time today.
 
Stee6043 said:
What's the cause for rolling blackouts? It seems like you guys consume massive amounts of energy cooling your homes/businesses most of the time. It's more energy efficient to heat than to cool..what gives?

Good luck to you guys down there. I'd send you a space heater or three if I thought it would help :)
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The other issue is the instrument air systems at the generating stations, and the reifineries, are one of those systems that as long as it works, just leave it be. Under normal weather conditions, any condensed water vapor in the instrument air is separated out and dried sufficiently so there are not any problems. When it gets this cold for this long, the water in the air lines starts to freeze and you lose the ability to control your systems safely. This happened to my refinery in New Orleans back in 1987(?). It's like watching a slow-motion accident with a ton of radio chatter.
 
Holy crap. Its colder in Houston this AM than Toronto. I can't imagine how much damage will be done with freezing temps like that in a place that never sees that kind of cold.
 
Screenshot_20210216-065548_One UI Home.jpg
 
Also in North Texas here. Coming from the North East and also snowmobiling in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan for years on end, the cold temps don't scare me. Like others have stated though, this area is not built for these temps. Amazes me that the building codes aren't more 'standard' on certain things ie water line burial depths, sprinkler line burial depths, insulation, etc. Anyway, the instant hot water heater which is installed outside on the wall frozen up. Had to thaw that out. The septic line on one leg froze up. Other than that, I was fortunate enough to keep my power all but one time for 5 hours. We are two blocks from the power company, and I think our leg must be a master feed that they can't cycle on and off. We received another email from the power company and the water company that both were going to be shut off on Thursday, but knock on wood, they are still running. We were cycling water every 2 hours at the house to make sure pipes didn't freeze. Quite an ordeal.

Concerning the boat, I went down and winterized the entire thing last Friday. I was worried because my remote monitoring system wasn't picking up that my bilge heater had turned on up to the that point. Turns out it just wasn't cold enough. Anyway, 2 hrs later and I had the fresh water system blown out, hot water heater drained, a little pink cycled through the bilge pumps, and both engines and genny drained/blown out. I also vacuumed the strainers out and popped the lids. My marina has been emailed and stated several boats have sunk due to broken strainers. I stopped down yesterday and the boat was still floating. I probably should have gone inside and checked things out in a little more detail, but I hadn't processed all the "what if's" at that point.

It's going to be a wild claims season this spring.
 
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