So the other day our pipes froze. This was very upsetting.

In addition to the upsetting piece of having to rough it for a day and a half (this is my HOUSE, I’m not out fucking camping, fuck that) it was upsetting in that there was relatively little we could do about it. The house has almost all of its indoor plumbing exposed in the basement. This could, of course, lead to the basement pipes being frozen, but when I ran down there with my IR thermometer I found that even at its coldest the basement was 55 degrees. The lowest I could get it was by scanning the windows or doors directly and then STILL hit 45. Not freezing. The indoor pipes were fine: the yard line was the issue. Shit.

We tried a couple of things to encourage it to thaw but it wasn’t until temps went up a bit and Erin kindly sat out in the yard like a weirdo holding a hairdryer on the water meter for an hour before the problem was finally solved. 

Taking a shower afterwards was glorious. 

But I guess lesson learned? I’ll now be even more paranoid about plumbing issues it seems, even though this specific problem isn’t something I’ve ever experienced in my life before. Next time I’m just going to dump charcoal in the yard and light it up. Literally a scorched earth policy to get me my damn shower.