Arctic Blast: Day 4
Tuesday, January 16th, 2024 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Negative 4F on this sunny Tuesday morning.
So, Saturday night it got down to around 11 below, and we still had running water downstairs on Sunday, but the high was only 1F or something.
It's kind of a blur now.
I was still cold proofing in the kitchen on Sunday, because cold air was coming out from the base cabinet, which has a hole for the pipes down into the crawl space.
So I had to stuff garbage bags in that hole, and then also around the base cabinet doors on the outside.
By Monday morning, however, we'd lost the cold water downstairs.
No cold to the kitchen or downstairs bathroom, despite the heating wires, which also means no more toilet.
I think it just got too cold in the basement itself, because the basement sink also has no cold.
Luckily, the upstairs continues to have both cold and hot, so the toilet and the shower work up there.
But... we lost cold downstairs on Sunday morning, after it had gotten down to about 16 below overnight.
Still, the temps inside the house weren't bad.
The back room's been the coldest, despite running the space heater 24/7.
But the rest of the house has been pretty comfortable.
The cats have been in for days in a row, and the walks with Yvette have been very short... just outside to pee or poop and then back in.
I'm in the back room now, and it's fine back here this morning, but I did stay out of this room for the past couple days.
The worst of this blast was definitely Saturday night and Sunday, but Monday was up to zero in the afternoon and only a few degrees below by night.
Today will be about the same, but starting tomorrow the highs will be in the teens, with the lows only single digits below zero.
They are still calling for negative 17 again on Saturday & Sunday, but I tend not to believe it.
Because since yesterday, it's been warmer than the original predictions.
I will say, however, that this house does require a TON of work if it's to remain habitable in this kind of cold.
Right now I can't run the washer, and to flush the toilet downstairs I have to pour a bucket of hot water into the bowl.
Also, I've been running a space heater back here all day and night, which is not safe.
And there's always the possibility that when things warm up, I'll find that a pipe has cracked somewhere, and could possibly flood the crawl space or basement.
Hopefully that won't be the case, but... things need to change!
The gas heater back here needs to get working again.
All these windows need to be properly repaired.
And I need to close off the huge holes in the basement walls where ducts, pipes, and electrical go thorugh into the crawl space.
If the bathroom pipes had been done properly... I didn't have long enough heat tape this time around... and if the basement was warmer... I think the pipes would be fine.
And there is more mortaring to do down in that crawl space too... which means getting rid of all the shutters and garbage my ancestors have thrown down there, so I can see what's really going on.
So... those have to be my goals this year.
If I can figure out how to not be foreclosed on by BMO... and how to not go bankrupt paying back that PNC loan!
Sounds like 2024 is gonna be loads of fun!
So how did the car and the pets do?
As I said, Snoop & Prowly have been inside for a few days now, but they've mostly been sleeping.
They didn't like me closing the basement door at first, but when I opened it for one or the other to go down there, they both came right back out.
Yvette's been okay too. She's taken to spending more time, finally, in Dad's room, the hallway (where there's a heat duct), and the living room... places she hasn't hung out at since before Dad died.
Speaking of Dad... who's 1st death day is tomorrow... his ghost seems to have reminded me last night that I forgot to change the furnace filters on November 1st.
I was peeing in the frozen toilet, when the bathroom light began to flicker insanely.
I was worried it was an electrical issue, so I turned it off and then went around checking stuff and sniffing for a fire... which lead me down to the basement... right as the furnace kicked on.
And I suddenly remembered about the filters and changed them.
And after that, the bathroom light's been working fine!
I've come to think, over the year, that Dad's ghost hangs out near the bathroom, because sometimes I close that door and it opens itself back up.
At any rate, he'd have been concerned about the filters being dirty, with as much as the furnace has been running.
Dirty filters will cause the fan motor to strain itself... which could lead to a failure!
Anyway, as for the car... it did start on Sunday and Monday, and I warmed it up both days and drove it around town a bit to get either beer or smokes.
In general, I'd say we're all surviving this nasty cold snap well enough, but the threat of a flood or a fire is still there until next Monday.
I guess I should put this space heater back on a timer, now that I'm returning to work.
Studio-wise, however... this was a good weekend.
I not only got both, Other Friends, and, Miss Fortune going in FL Studio, with fully articulated bass lines and drums... but I brought all the other songs up to date.
Three other songs still needed full drum tracks, and I got that done.
And one song, Live it Fast, needed extensive reworking to the chord structure, but I got that done too.
So here in the middle of January, I have the foundations of all ten songs done!
I'm on track to get the guitars and other instruments recorded through the winter, as planned.
And everything's up on SoundCloud now, for me to review and sing along with as I drive back and forth this week.
I was getting all ready to leave and then realized... I leave at 2:20PM, not 1:20!
1:20 was during winter break!
So the car is out there right now running... and I may just leave it run.
Why not?... this cold blast has me running everything else way too much, right?
I've kinda got no choice but to leave the space heater running today while I'm gone. the back room will not recover if I turn it off even for a few hours.
But I can turn everything else off on that circuit, and it has been fine the past three days just going full bore.
Most likely the only harm will be to the electric bill.
Speaking of bills, I did get paid today and moved $780 into savings for PNC to come snatch away tomorrow.
It leaves me with $222.00 in the checking account, which I dare not touch, because I'll have to pay BMO as soon as the next paycheck gets here on the 30th.
My daily expenses, the past couple weeks, have gone on one of the Discover cards, with a 3K limit.
But I can't play that game forever.
Still, I do think once we get to Monday the 22nd, when it's a glorious 35F, things will start getting better on all fronts.
The rest of the winter's probably gonna be a cake walk compared to this week.
And once I'm out of emergency mode, and back to the normal work routine, with no more big weekends on the horizon, I'm sure I'll find the wherewithal to straighten out my financial situation.
I did a lot with my, Thanksgiving/Christmas/New year/MLK free time.
The studio's together and the album's off the ground.
The house was cleansed of bad vibes... even if I'm struggling with the demons of the cold.
But we're surviving the arctic blast, and... I did get those coveted path lights working.
Tonight will be the first night I arrive home from work to see them on as I pull in the driveway.
There was some kind of teacher thing going on at Cloud today, so no classes, and I got to take it easy tonight.
The path lights are pretty nice at night!.. it's so well lit out there now!
We are holding at zero right now, which is warmer than the past three nights.
The back room didn't burst into flames, and we still have hot water downstairs here.
I looked into the gas wall heater situation a little bit.
A new one would cost easily $1200.00, so that's out!
I think I can fix it myself if I get enough information, but it'll have to wait until it's warmed up again.
The pilot still works, but it doesn't fire, so it's either the wires to the thermostat (wherever that is) or the gas valve is clogged, or it's the TEG.
A TEG (Thermo Electric Generator) is a little solid state device that uses heat to generate small voltages.
I just need to know how to safely turn the gas off back here, and stuff like that.
But spare parts will be cheeper than a repair man or a new unit.
I do think the worst of this is over.
Tomorrow it's gonna be +18F for a high, and +5F for the low.
And it gets better every day after that.
As for the NOAA app calling for negative teens on SAT & SUN, my other app (WeaWow) said it would be only -7F both nights... and NOAA even briefly changed their outlook to show this today... though now they've reverted back to negative teens.
I think it will be closer to zero or -2 those nights... based on how it's all gone so far.
Probably won't get the cold water back until Monday, but I don't think we'll lose the hot down here.
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