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brekk

brekk

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Sanrith Descartes said:
First thing my in-laws told me about my first winter in NY. Front and back yard water pipes go off around Dec 1 each year and back on in April or so.
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That's external. If you lose heat you should shutoff the main valve so the only water in the system is whats already in the pipes (a few gallons at most)

People posting videos of these inside waterfalls. Fucking turn off your water.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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brekk said:
That's external. If you lose heat you should shutoff the main valve so the only water in the system is whats already in the pipes (a few gallons at most)
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oh, yeah but all of it originates in the basement. I shut the externals off there and bleed them. I have a boiler/furnace with oil tank so heat isnt normally an issue. I also insulate all the water pipes in the basement with that wrap around insulation.
 
Burns

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brekk said:
Do you people in Texas not have water shutoffs? Fucking turn off the water and drain your system!! You'll avoid burst pipes and tons of damage.
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I bet we would be surprised by the amount of home owners that don't know how to turn off their water main, even though YouTube probably has 1000 instructional videos on it. I would wager 90% of life long renters have no idea there is a main shut off, at all.

We, of course, do have one, and ours is out by the street, in all the houses I can recall living in, in Texas.



As for snow plows and road salt posts:
No municipality in North Texas (not you, Panhandle) is going to spend the cash to upkeep and store that equipment for an average use of 1 day every 6 to 10 years. That means on the snow day, the whole city shuts down, and very few businesses are going to pay private plows to upkeep their property for all the traffic that doesn't exist. Therefor no private individuals are going to spend the money and garage space to keep a blade for an extra thousand they might make, once every decade. The most the city will do is enlist the construction trucks with sand spreaders, scoop up the sand they bought for various road work projects, and put it on the iced bridges. (South Texas, like Houston and San Antonio get snow once every 50 to 100 years, so they aren't even worth discussing)

Additionally, for native Texans, garages are for storage and/or watching the game/race with the bros while drinking from a keg. So any plow blade will get buried so deep, no one would be able to get to it, when it's needed, anyway.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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Snowing again on Long Island. We had sleet last night. The car literally had a sheet of ice 3/8ths of an inch thick covering it. I had to break the ice shell to remove the snow trapped underneath. The glass was just an impenetrable ice sheet. Couldnt scrape it. Had to let the defrosters do their job.
 
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Phazael

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brekk said:
Do you people in Texas not have water shutoffs? Fucking turn off the water and drain your system!! You'll avoid burst pipes and tons of damage.
Click to expand...
Not sufficient and compartmentalized ones, no. First thing I did when the power started to flake sunday is bottle up some water to run the shitters, shut off the water, and then emptied our pipes. Burst pipes are a fucking nightmare to deal with and with houses not having sectional shut offs, you are pretty much stuck with no water if anything pops around here. Luckily for me, nothing popped despite five days of no power. We also had a friend with a workshop that happened to have a wood burning stove in it (yay German club) and so we did not freeze, it just sucked crashing in a woodshop with no power for a week. Someone eventually got a hold of a generator, so we could recharge things and use the nuker. The minor effort I put into Coronapanic prep paid off for all of us as I was able to bring enough drinking water and dry food to help keep us fed and one of the other dudes was able to cook some Bratts over an open firepit we MacGuivered outside. Five days with no shower is probably the worst thing, though, especially at my fat ass size. I think I need a firehouse with hot bleach aimed at my balls for an hour to undo the stink of a week with no shower access.
 
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BrutulTM

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Burns said:
Additionally, for native Texans, garages are for storage and/or watching the game/race with the bros while drinking from a keg. So any plow blade will get buried so deep, no one would be able to get to it, when it's needed, anyway.
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And even the cheapest pickup mount plows cost $1500 and require modifications to the pickup and take up a lot of space. Not something you're going to go out and buy because there's a few inches of snow once every 20 years.
 
Chanur

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Borzak said:
You can only shift power so far. The adjacent states are in the same shape but it doesn't make news because they are a much smaller state. OK was -17F. LA lost major sections of power they are still working on. The nuclear plant outside New Orleans, River Bend just north of Baton Rouge, and the Port Gibson nuclear plant in MS announced they were already running at max capacity. Not sure where they think they were going to get power from nearby.

Entergy (provider in LA) made a shift 20+ years ago to not shift power to the east so that power could be shifted domino up the east coast when they had power drains in hot weather. That used to be common in the summer because their contract agreement called for it. They ended that and the summer blackouts stopped.

Under Obama the federal government tried to regulat the ogranization that oversaw the powergrid into merging with the west so CA could get power. Good luck with that.
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To reinforce this my brother in law in Louisiana was with out power.
 
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Burnem Wizfyre

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Burns said:
I bet we would be surprised by the amount of home owners that don't know how to turn off their water main, even though YouTube probably has 1000 instructional videos on it. I would wager 90% of life long renters have no idea there is a main shut off, at all.

We, of course, do have one, and ours is out by the street, in all the houses I can recall living in, in Texas.



As for snow plows and road salt posts:
No municipality in North Texas (not you, Panhandle) is going to spend the cash to upkeep and store that equipment for an average use of 1 day every 6 to 10 years. That means on the snow day, the whole city shuts down, and very few businesses are going to pay private plows to upkeep their property for all the traffic that doesn't exist. Therefor no private individuals are going to spend the money and garage space to keep a blade for an extra thousand they might make, once every decade. The most the city will do is enlist the construction trucks with sand spreaders, scoop up the sand they bought for various road work projects, and put it on the iced bridges. (South Texas, like Houston and San Antonio get snow once every 50 to 100 years, so they aren't even worth discussing)

Additionally, for native Texans, garages are for storage and/or watching the game/race with the bros while drinking from a keg. So any plow blade will get buried so deep, no one would be able to get to it, when it's needed, anyway.
Click to expand...
I live Just north of Corpus Christi in a small town, it’s snowed 4 times in my life and I’m 41. All four events happened in the last 20 years, it happens much more frequently even just relatively north of me in San Antonio. Climate change is real, global warming is bullshit, hell is freezing over a lot more often.
 
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Hekotat

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slippery said:
This is hysterical.

Also government at work.
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We had the same issue at our previous job when it came to road conditions. One side of the street was Irving, the other side DFW Airport and both refused to repair the roads. You could host the Baja 3000 down that 2 mile stripe of road. I'm pretty sure sand people were over there taking pot shots at some of the vehicles driving through as well.
 
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AladainAF

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lurkingdirk said:
You seriously think they're going to pay out? They're going to declare an act of God or whatever, and people are going to be screwed.
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Of course they are going to pay out. Are you on drugs?

I do expect a lot of them to sue the shit out of oncor, austin energy, etc. They were told to winterize, and they clearly did not.

Operations Messages

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1613761555018.png
 
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AladainAF

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BTW if any Austin bros need a shower and don't have water, PM me. You can come over here and get a nice warm shower, though I suspect all the water issues are gonna be solved in the next day.
 
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lurkingdirk

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AladainAF said:
Of course they are going to pay out. Are you on drugs?

I do expect a lot of them to sue the shit out of oncor, austin energy, etc. They were told to winterize, and they clearly did not.

Operations Messages

Find important messages from the ERCOT Control Room on operational information, ancillary services, curtailments, violations and more.
www.ercot.com www.ercot.com

View attachment 336174
Click to expand...

Anything they can call flooding they won't pay for. That might include run off water, or even burst pipes in some cases. I guarantee you there are going to be people, a lot of them, who get shafted by their insurance companies.
 
AladainAF

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lurkingdirk said:
Anything they can call flooding they won't pay for. That might include run off water, or even burst pipes in some cases. I guarantee you there are going to be people, a lot of them, who get shafted by their insurance companies.
Click to expand...

They specifically call out flooding as something that is covered, if its caused by a covered loss which includes broken pipes, etc.

It's much more cut and dry than flooding vs. wind damage in a hurricane.

I'd be surprised if any major insurance carrier doesn't pay out tbh. If they don't its likely that the customer didn't pay for the policy to cover it. State Farm, for example, covers broken pipes only to a certain amount unless you pay for the additional coverage.

Edit: I actually called my state farm agent and they confirmed that frozen pipes that burst are completely covered up to the coverage of the policy (in my case thats the entire replacement cost of the house). They said that is standard for home owner policies, so my previous pre-edit sentence above is incorrect. They said that you can opt for a cheaper policy without this coverage, but that if I had a broken pipe, they would certainly cover everything.
 
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Ishad

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AladainAF said:
BTW if any Austin bros need a shower and don't have water, PM me. You can come over here and get a nice warm shower, though I suspect all the water issues are gonna be solved in the next day.
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Boil water notices are going to be around for a little while. The TCEQs backlog is going to be ridiculous.
 
Borzak

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Governor of TX now allowing off road diesel on road vehicles. Same damn exact thing, just offroad is dyed so DOT or cops can check to see if you paid road taxes on the diesel unlike ag and industrial stuff. I foresee major pissed off people in the future having died diesel or some left over intanks when this over and get stopped/checked.
 
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