General > General Technical Chat
The 8-Bit Guys house in Texas
JohnnyMalaria:
--- Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 04:49:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: drussell on February 21, 2021, 04:20:36 pm ---Yeah, leaving your home unattended in freezing temperatures with no power and heat without turning off the water is pretty silly. I would have at least shut it off and tried to drain as much as possible to limit potential damage. I've always got some plumbing antifreeze out in the garage, would have poured a little in each sink trap and toilet too. If you at least drain your water heater, washing machine inlet hoses and dishwasher inlet valve you've eliminated the most costly replacement items and with the main water off it will minimize any damage to the house itself. Repairing a few burst pipes is an expense and is certainly annoying, but not nearly as bad as if you flood your house first.
--- End quote ---
If you don't have plumbing/RV antifreeze, a good handful of salt dumped into each sink, bath or shower trap, and a couple of handfuls dumped into the toilet and any larger interior floor drains will provide freeze protection down to about -20 deg C. Even if there isn't enough salt in solution to stop the traps freezing it will be slushy ice that cant burst them. However its not great for long-term winterization and isn't suitable for winterizing appliances as the strong brine solution may slowly corrode metal parts.
Its possible he was confused due to borderline hypothermia, but I'm probably being over-generous to suggest that . . .
--- End quote ---
Sure, hindsight is wonderful. But Texas isn't used to that extreme cold. And based on how people panic buy when a hurricane threatens where I live, I would expect most people would have had a hard time finding stuff or knowing how to prepare.
Most of the continental US simply doesn't have the population density to raise enough taxes to construct the kind of utility infrastructure found in more dense places such as Europe. When I moved from Europe to the US in the 90s, it struck me that there is a significant cultural difference: things are built to be sufficient, not necessarily to withstand rare weather events. And the weather is more extreme, too.
JohnnyMalaria:
--- Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 04:17:21 pm ---@JohnnyMalaria,
I did check climate stats for the Dallas/Fort Worth area before I made that comment: https://www.weather.gov/fwd/d32data
Of course Texas is a big state, extending over 10 degrees of latitude, and local microclimates can elevate minimum temperatures by several degrees so I don't doubt your experience. YMMV.
--- End quote ---
Great, which means all you have to go on is a table of numbers. Texas is big and unbelievably flat (except in the west) and there really aren't any microclimates, especially in the Austin-Dallas-Houston triangle where I lived. In fact, the weather for the entire state is quite predictable. Summer: 95F/95%RH. Clipper fronts general sweep down from the arctic but fizzle out before affecting Texas too much except in the winter when such fronts survive. The climate is nothing like Europe, for example.
Most of those "freeze" events would have been for about an hour or two before sunrise - not enough time to freeze pipes. This recent event is different. Prolonged and extreme low temperatures will freeze pipes quickly.
bdunham7:
--- Quote from: GlennSprigg on February 21, 2021, 12:25:59 pm ---Well, in Australia, we have a single privately owned cattle station in the out-back, that is
bigger than the whole State of Texas !! I don't know what it proves, but it's true! haha... :-+
--- End quote ---
That's a bit of an exaggeration, like by 25X. And it is big and dry and doesn't support very many cattle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station
nctnico:
--- Quote from: bdunham7 on February 21, 2021, 05:37:59 pm ---
--- Quote from: GlennSprigg on February 21, 2021, 12:25:59 pm ---Well, in Australia, we have a single privately owned cattle station in the out-back, that is
bigger than the whole State of Texas !! I don't know what it proves, but it's true! haha... :-+
--- End quote ---
That's a bit of an exaggeration, like by 25X. And it is big and dry and doesn't support very many cattle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station
--- End quote ---
I'd say it is whoefully inadequate. Amateur farming at best. The Netherlands has 1.5 times the land surface but has room for 97 million chickens, 12 million pigs and 3.9 million cows.
bdunham7:
--- Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 21, 2021, 05:18:22 pm ---Most of those "freeze" events would have been for about an hour or two before sunrise - not enough time to freeze pipes. This recent event is different. Prolonged and extreme low temperatures will freeze pipes quickly.
--- End quote ---
A hard freeze may be rare, but not unheard of. There have been enough similar events in the past few decades to give sufficient warning. It's analogous to earthquake protection here in SoCal--severe earthquakes are 'rare' but can happen anytime, so building codes and other policies have been adapted to be ready for them.
Where I live there would also be devastation if we got weather like Texas just had. The difference is that the area has never, ever had such weather as opposed to having it once a decade.
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