My pipes froze last weekend thanks to that brutally cold front that rolled across much of the country.
It was my first time to ever have the issue so I, being the expert I am, set off to Googling wtf to do.
Articles told me to leave the faucets open (—and also to leave them closed lest they build up too much pressure and burst 🙃); to blast the heat in the house and leave all the sink cabinetry open so the water lines & pipes could eventually warm up; to put heating blankets on the pipes; to use a space heater to help warm them up; oh, and to not be the idiot who gets their pipes frozen in the first place.
Welp, all for naught.
Despite all of the above, I still had nothing by the end of the day. My wide sprawl of warmed-air attempts weren’t up to the task. I even put a space heater and lizard lamp in the mechanical room right next to the pipes.
Surely, I thought, leaving them in there over night will get’m warmed up enough to get some movement come morning.
—yet morning proved otherwise.
I decided to do research like people used to do before Google: I talked to some friends.
One of them mentioned having used a blow dryer before. So, I found my daughter’s blow dryer, plugged it in, waved it around a few inches of the pipe, and, within twenty maybe thirty seconds tops, heard the ice begin to break up and flow. Huzzah!
…But who cares? Why bother you with my little misadventure?
It was a great reminder for me on the differences between maintaining a steady state vs. solving a problem.
Doing that first list of things before the problem arose very well may have kept the problem from ever arising. But once you find yourself with a specific problem, the things you do for a steady state are no longer viable since the state has changed.
Once you’ve got a specific problem on hand, reach for a concentrated, specific solution to break that shit up and get back on track—and then be more mindful on how to keep them from happening in the first place.