About a week ago, I woke up on a Saturday morning to a homeowner's nightmare: I turned on the bathroom faucet and
nothing happened. No water came out of the faucet. Zip, zilch, nada. The cold water pipe in our one and only bathroom had frozen overnight.
We love our historic home, but modern plumbing is one of the things we appreciate.
The frozen pipe itself wasn't the real issue, although it's definitely inconvenient not to have running water in the bathroom. No, the true danger is that those pipes often burst, leading to severe amounts of damage if the water supply isn't shut off immediately. Even in the best case scenario, a burst pipe needs to be replaced. This is never a project that a homeowner wants to take on, and certainly not when you're already committed to several other large projects.
The worst part of this situation was that the frozen pipe was entirely avoidable, were it not for a
single bad decision. During especially cold weather, we usually let our faucets drip overnight or anytime we aren't going to be using water for an extended period of time. But this particular night, I made the decision not to drip the bathroom faucet. In hindsight, it was the wrong call.
In order to save others from making a similar bad decision, I've shared the chain of events here. Fortunately, we were able to thaw the pipe without it bursting, thanks to some good advice from my father-in-law and brother-in-law. Thank goodness for knowledgeable family members. I can't remember the last time I felt so grateful. Now that you know we didn't suffer hardship as a result of my bad decision, go ahead and laugh or roll your eyes at my stupidity. If you're just interested in how we got the pipes to thaw, feel free to skip to the end.