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I pray for you and your area. Has Edwards activated the National Guard?
I don't know. Not keeping up much with the news. Over at a friends house to warm up. Saw them woking on the lines while on the way in. Hopefully will get power back soon.
 
Much warmer today. Found a leak under the house where insulation came off the pipes.
Back door looks horrible.
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Local hardware store is closed so will have to go to big box store
 
It probably is an interior door. It's solid core though. We used to have a steel door there but when we came back it was gone and that one was put in it's place. We suspect the tenants stole the steel door for their own house because the wood door was brand new when we got back so we think they took the steel one when they realized they had to move. I don't think the house is wrapped properly to direct moisture away either. Sill is rotted all to hell and a lot of water splashes on that back door. It got worse after my brother broke the pet door & then it ended up disintegrating as the moisture got in.

That spigot next to it was broken at an elbow below.

My brother has a bunch of crap piled up against the door. I tried to get in to flip the breaker. Pushed and pushed but door kept bouncing back & then one of the cinderblocks rolled. I twisted my ankle and fell. So I'm pretty sore. Friend came over and assessed the damage to water pipes on that side. Went to Lowes & got some parts. He climbed under and installed them. Water tank is still filling, none of the sink faucets work but the cold water in the tub works. Not sure what is going on. Maybe leak from sink water supply. Hope it's not anything wrong in the well shed.

Friend will come back later to look for more leaks if it doesn't clear up.

I filled up a bucket with water in case we have to shut off water again.

Mom was freaking out and screaming at me about the water heater. She walked past it and knew it was filling and screamed "Turn off the air conditioner!" and I was like "WTF does the air conditioner have to do with the water heater?" and she said "I mean the water heater!" and I said "It's off". "THEN WHY IS IT MAKING THAT NOISE!!!" and I yelled back "BECAUSE IT'S FILLING WITH WATER!!" She's not usually dumb, but sometimes she is so incredibly dumb I don't know how she survived to be 70.

At least we had good bbq at friend's house.

Speaking of the friend's house-- early saturday morning some a-hole drove by in a gray car w/ dark tinted windows. The little dog Stubbylegs chased after it. One of the mofos pulled out a gun and shot him in the face & bullets ricocheted and hit my friend's bedroom window. Neighbors saw it happen. Friend slept through it but his ex heard it and freaked out. But nobody called the cops. Poor dog looks like he was grazed - bleeding from the face. Vet was closed & they couldn't afford to get him treated anyway. He disappeared before I could get a better look at him and clean his face.
 
I've read over 100 books since last April. I just finished Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks. I like his books but they tug on my heart strings. I am quite emotional since losing my wife 3½ years ago.

I read mostly online using the NC digital library. It's easy and if I don't like a book I can just dump it instantly. It took a while to get used to reading on a screen but it saves gas. Since I speed read I skip over trash or uninteresting rabbit trails. One think that disappoints me is the bad language but it's out there. Nowadays girls talk worse that 82d ABN barracks talk in my day and have more ink than a sailor or marine. I have found Janice Cantore to write some pretty good clean crime stories.
 
I've read over 100 books since last April. I just finished Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks. I like his books but they tug on my heart strings. I am quite emotional since losing my wife 3½ years ago.

I read mostly online using the NC digital library. It's easy and if I don't like a book I can just dump it instantly. It took a while to get used to reading on a screen but it saves gas. Since I speed read I skip over trash or uninteresting rabbit trails. One think that disappoints me is the bad language but it's out there. Nowadays girls talk worse that 82d ABN barracks talk in my day and have more ink than a sailor or marine. I have found Janice Cantore to write some pretty good clean crime stories.
Sorry to hear about your wife Eddie.
 
Found the leak for my plumbing. It's coming from under the kitchen sink (under the house). Looks like both lines are ruptured. Ugh. Thinking of replacing it with PEX and wrapping the daylights out of it in insulation wrap.
 
Thanks, Eddie. I'm hoping we won't get continual freezing. I'm planning to try to find some way to keep it from getting too cold under there. I'm also hoping we won't get more winter storms like we got anytime soon.
 
Found the leak for my plumbing. It's coming from under the kitchen sink (under the house). Looks like both lines are ruptured. Ugh. Thinking of replacing it with PEX and wrapping the daylights out of it in insulation wrap.

Ok, well isn't that storm a once in a generation happening? I assume under the house is the crawl space? On Ranch houses here, or ramblers or one story or whatever your term is, they put the furnace in the crawl space, which is more like a bend over and shuffle, as it's about 4 foot tall.

They have to put the furnace there though, that's the only way to keep the pipes from freezing when the temps are below freezing for months.

That might be an option for you to guard against anything like that happening again.

As far as Pex, after installing tons of it, I will never use anything else unless something better comes out.
 
A friend said he used an expensive blue flex pipe from his well to the house. He says it won't freeze and it can't be spliced. I suspect either he or his friend who installed it just misinterpreted what they read or were told.
 
A friend said he used an expensive blue flex pipe from his well to the house. He says it won't freeze and it can't be spliced. I suspect either he or his friend who installed it just misinterpreted what they read or were told.

Misinterpreted that it won't freeze or can't be spliced?
 

Well, anything can be cut by the thing that cuts it, and freezing just depends on depth. I think it's 4 feet here for Gas and Power, but it might be 6. My well pipe leading to what will be my shop is 12 feet deep because that's where I had to splice in.
 
My house is up on sort of pyramid concrete pillars. The underside is open to the elements and is all dirt. Not really safe to put any sort of furnace under there.

Picked up my friend early this morning & went to Lowes to get supplies (I get military discount there). I got enough fittings & pipe to fix under the kitchen sink and under mom's bathroom sink (which I suspected was leaking).

Friend got out my chainsaw and cut down some trees that were in the way (Kobalt battery powered thing works great). He got scratched up by the blackberry bushes though. He crawled under there & patched the CPVC with PEX. PVC seemed to be fine. Turned on the water to test it. No leaks in the cabinet but it was leaking under the house. CPVC had split along the length farther back. Friend patched that. Another test-- long enough to refill the toilet. Friend reported CPVC ruptures all over-- from the laundry room all the way to my bathroom on the other side of the house. So that whole line is toast. He's going to write up a supply list for me & Thursday (barring any unforeseen circumstance) we will go to the store, pick up supplies, and he's going to replace the whole run of CPVC and PVC with PEX. He will leave it long enough to splice in new lines later. We're also discussing adding some sort of PEX manifold. I want to do a cold water manifold near the laundry room (which is closest to the water entering the house) and a hot water manifold near the water heater (makes more sense than routing the water from heater all the way to other side of the house and then back). Trying to figure out if I can sort of make my own manifold or if I should just buy a pre-built one.

Meanwhile, friend found a car he wants to get in Houston. At first he was saying he wanted manual transmission so his ex couldn't drive it. I told him the simplest way to keep her from driving his car was to say "No". But he said he was worried she'd just take his keys when he's sleeping & claim he gave her permission. She still technically owes him for a vehicle he bought for her and then it got repo'd bc she lost her job & he couldn't afford the last few payments (plus he also decided he didn't want her to have the car anymore bc she used it to run off and cheat on him).

We joked that he's no longer allowed to pick vehicles or women on his own bc he's terrible at it.
 
@zannej Wait, you drove someone somewhere?? Unheard of!
At first he was saying he wanted manual transmission so his ex couldn't drive it. I told him the simplest way to keep her from driving his car was to say "No". But he said he was worried she'd just take his keys when he's sleeping & claim he gave her permission.
I think there are, like, laws and courts and stuff that handle this kind of thing. Taking someone's keys without permission and driving a car that isn't yours is grand theft auto, pretty serious crime.
 
My house is up on sort of pyramid concrete pillars. The underside is open to the elements and is all dirt. Not really safe to put any sort of furnace under there.

Picked up my friend early this morning & went to Lowes to get supplies (I get military discount there). I got enough fittings & pipe to fix under the kitchen sink and under mom's bathroom sink (which I suspected was leaking).

Friend got out my chainsaw and cut down some trees that were in the way (Kobalt battery powered thing works great). He got scratched up by the blackberry bushes though. He crawled under there & patched the CPVC with PEX. PVC seemed to be fine. Turned on the water to test it. No leaks in the cabinet but it was leaking under the house. CPVC had split along the length farther back. Friend patched that. Another test-- long enough to refill the toilet. Friend reported CPVC ruptures all over-- from the laundry room all the way to my bathroom on the other side of the house. So that whole line is toast. He's going to write up a supply list for me & Thursday (barring any unforeseen circumstance) we will go to the store, pick up supplies, and he's going to replace the whole run of CPVC and PVC with PEX. He will leave it long enough to splice in new lines later. We're also discussing adding some sort of PEX manifold. I want to do a cold water manifold near the laundry room (which is closest to the water entering the house) and a hot water manifold near the water heater (makes more sense than routing the water from heater all the way to other side of the house and then back). Trying to figure out if I can sort of make my own manifold or if I should just buy a pre-built one.

Ok, so you are going to do whole house PEX? Might as well, if you're doing some. Now is the perfect time to put in a 3 stage whole house water filter that takes 2.5" x 10" standard sediment and carbon filters, if you don't have a system like that. If you do that, buy your replacement filters on Ebay or Amazon in 25 or 50 pc. lots because they are $ compared to Lowe's or Home Depot at $$$$$$$$$$$$.

Carbon filters are a little over $2 each on Ebay, Sediment are a little over $1 on Amazon. The last price I remember at Lowe's was $11 each.

I like the Lowe's Military discount, but it's useless for tons of stuff that is much cheaper elsewhere. They get their money back by raising prices here. Lumber last year was insane, with 2x boards almost 3 times as expensive as 2019.
 
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