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The 8-Bit Guys house in Texas
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rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: tpowell1830 on February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pm ---I don't know where this guy lives in Texas, but the temperatures that we saw during this storm was well below the winter temperatures that we normally get.
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He lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and I can also confirm the rarity of such events.


--- Quote from: tpowell1830 on February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pm ---Although I think it is unfortunate for all those many people who had pipes burst, the typical method for handling this is similar to what Ian described above. I don't know why this guy didn't think of this, but many people were caught with the same problem.
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I would have probably done the same if I had left my house, but during the power outage we still had gas+water and the roads were still in pretty bad shape for driving, thus shutting off the water was not an option. Fortunately power was restored the next day (30h total), otherwise we would have left just like David.

During the -15°C night, where temps inside the house reached 2°C, we had some of the upstairs pipes frozen despite leaving the faucets dripping - no burst pipes, fortunately. Many in my neighbourhood did the same and had burst pipes. Not much else people could do, especially given the driving conditions were still very poor.
 

--- Quote from: tpowell1830 on February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pm ---However, all I see is criticism and hate in the comments, not a bit of empathy. I don't understand this attitude. Perhaps someone could explain. Many people suffered during this extremely rare occurrence, blaming their ignorance is hardly justified.
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Well, it is easy to throw rocks in scenarios thst are common in other places. Coming from Brazil, we could never understand how so many people died in those "heat waves" in Europe, until you learn the specificities of the place. A Dallas Texan, used to 40+ days of 40°C+ temperatures Every. Single. Summer would be equally baffled.


--- Quote from: tpowell1830 on February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pm ---EDIT: One of the many problems in an ice storm where the infrastructure is not designed to handle is the roads. Many of our interstate highways have bridges and overpasses that will gather black ice and this cripples commerce. This is one of the reasons that grocery stores are empty. As the wreck in FW/Dal shows, it is disastrous to get out on the road during an ice storm in Texas, as rare as they are.

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This is a true problem that is severely compounded by the lack of equipment to deal with that (snow plows and salt road trucks are not common), lack of appropriate tires, as well as training/experience to drive in such conditions (apart from the idiots that think it is the same as a heavy rain). I had to learn by practice, but I can't claim any proficiency.


--- Quote from: james_s on February 21, 2021, 10:39:27 pm ---Well that's kind of irrelevant since we're discussing an event in Texas which is an area that is full of typical US houses.

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That is true, but I really dislike the way houses are built here... Styrofoam, cardboard and lollipop sticks seem to be the norm. :-DD
james_s:

--- Quote from: rsjsouza on February 21, 2021, 11:38:35 pm ---That is true, but I really dislike the way houses are built here... Styrofoam, cardboard and lollipop sticks seem to be the norm. :-DD

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Modern US houses are crap, no argument there. They're built as cheaply as possible and it's because people either don't know or don't care, by the time the place falls apart they'll live somewhere else is how most people think. They go gaga over trendy granite countertops and up to date flooring but ask most people about the framing, plumbing, electrical and mechanicals and they'll be completely clueless. I'm in the opposite camp and could not care less about styles and trends but I accept the fact that I'm in the minority.
Stray Electron:

--- Quote from: james_s on February 21, 2021, 10:20:15 pm ---

An inch or two of clean water that sits in a house for any length of time is enough to "ruin" it in the sense that it's going to have to be completely gutted. Carpet and flooring will be destroyed, drywall will often start growing mold that is virtually impossible to stop, requiring it to all be removed. It's common for particle board to be used as a base under laminate flooring and that will swell up like a sponge so all of the flooring has to be ripped out and replaced. Most kitchen and bathroom cabinets are made of particle board so any at the floor level will swell up and start falling apart. It may not look nearly as bad, and it won't be as gross to clean it out, but the financial cost of dealing with 3' of sewer water vs 2" of clean water is probably not as significant as you think. They're both going to require the interior to be stripped down to bare studs.

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   Gee, then the house that I'm sitting in right now has been ruined at least four times!  But my take is that it's only "ruined" if you're a totally irresponsible home owner and you just throw your hands up in the air and expect your insurance company or someone else, anyone else, to deal with your problems. That seems to clearly be the case with the 8-bit guy. Those of us to do take responsibility for dealing with our own problems would have grabbed a wet vac (and a generator if necessary) and gotten up all of the water and then dried out the room with a heater and then wouldn't have had a mold issue. Or more likely, we would have stayed home to start with and found a way to keep some heat in the house and/or drained the pipes, instead of high tailing it to a motel when things got uncomfortable and simply abandoning our home to it's fate with no preparations!

   Anymore, the US seems to be FULL of inept, lazy, stupid people that can't even manage to turn off the water by themselves and they line up by the thousands to whine and cry on television and demand that "The Government" take care of them!

  Speaking as someone who's current house has been flooded four times and also had two previous homes in Virginia flooded during HARD freezes and with no power.

   And BTW one of my 60+ year old female cousins was in Abilene, Texas (near the northern panhandle) during the freeze and at the same time had Covid and she stayed in a mobile home by herself and managed with no great difficulty despite losing power.

   I have NO sympathy for the 8-bit guy or most of the other whinny people on television that failed to prepare for this WELL announced cold weather event.
JohnnyMalaria:

--- Quote from: Stray Electron on February 22, 2021, 12:24:51 am ---   I have NO sympathy for the 8-bit guy or most of the other whinny people on television that failed to prepare for this WELL announced cold weather event.

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Was he asking for sympathy? No. He was just reporting what happened. And he has insurance so, yes, let them deal with it.

Sorry, but if you think you can be certain that a heating a room will remove all the damp in the insulation behind the drywall, then you are very wrong. For damage like that, doing the remedial work yourself just to save on the insurance deductible is daft.

Precautions can only help so far. For example, after I got married, I moved from my house but I kept it. I turned the water off at the street. No problem. Until one winter's day, I went to check on the house. First thing I did was to turn the water on. Imagine my surprise when I saw the meter turning. Well, into the house I went, searching for running water. Eventually, I found it - a burst pipe in the crawl space (I will NEVER buy a house with a crawl space ever again but that's another tragedy I won't tell). How so? The city had been around and installed meters for remote reading and turned my water back on.

Shit happens. Telling people they're dicks just because they are human is, well, dickish. I hope tragedy never befalls you because of a poor decision.
rdl:
I live in Mississippi and have been here nearly 20 years. This storm was very unusual and intense. In the previous two decades I've seen snow here twice and in both cases it was gone in a day or two. This storm was probably 20% snow and 80% ice. Ice storms are bad news. When everything is encased in thick ice, there's not much you can do except wait for it to thaw. Temperatures rarely go below freezing here, this week there was a stretch of several days when it didn't get above 20 degrees. Yesterday it finally started to warm up and today it got to 60 degrees, but there's still ice on the ground in places.
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