A Better Day

I feel the need to update my last post...after the plumber came (Amazing man, only charged us $20, which probably only paid his gas, as he's been running all over fixing "weather" problems), we felt hopeful. Luckily, we've found a plumber who is willing to show us not only what is wrong, but what parts are needed to fix it, and how to use them so we can be self-sufficient. I'm not sure how he stays in business, perhaps from all the referrals, but even then, he doesn't charge much (our last ordeal took three days to fix, and he only charged $70 TOTAL). Anyhow, after he left we were able to fix the broken pipes (oh, yes, the upstairs bathroom broke due to freezing after all, and I'm including the kitchen breakage here as well...) for a total of (drum roll please) $8. Yeah, I think I can handle that. We also found the coldest wind tunnel running across the top of our basement (thanks to John, our plumber), so even though our basement was warm (as Stephen had stuffed as much fiberglass insulation in as he could) the ceiling of our basement was being blasted by air that was below zero. Problem here is, we probably would never have noticed, as neither of us is very tall in stature, and you don't feel it down below at all...only right at the ceiling. So, we're guessing this wind tunnel was doing the freezing, because it's not much warmer outside, but our pipes haven't frozen again since we stopped it.


Now, we're almost caught up in cleaning up the messes caused by the water, and also the rest of the house (which we put off cleaning due to having to worry about pipes). The children and I even got to sit and read stories today!

On another humorous note...I just discovered that there is a reason that my thermostat says it's 65 in my house, but I'm freezing. Don't know why it didn't dawn on me before...my monitor is placed directly below the thermostat. Anyone ever felt the heat given off by a monitor? Yup, feeling silly...but somehow grateful, since I thought I had to tough it out at 65, but our home was probably colder, which more than likely kept the heat bill lower than it would have otherwise been. The kids didn't seem to notice, but they run around all day...how could they?