The 8-Bit Guys house in Texas

[rsjsouza]

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.

He lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and I can also confirm the rarity of such events.

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.

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.
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[james_s]

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

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]

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.

   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]

   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.

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.

[james_s]

Usually the insurance doesn't WANT you to deal with it. In fact if you do interfere and start cleaning up before they've had an adjuster out there to inspect it that can make things harder for you. It's not intuitive at all but that's how it is. Sounds like he was not home when the flooding happened so it may have sat for a while before he knew what was wrong. Particle board swelling and mold damage are going to be very real concerns. Letting the insurance handle it is what you do when a major disaster like this happens, that's what people have insurance for. You might get it all cleaned up and then find out several years later that you've got mold growing in the drywall, or water damage in electrical or mechanical systems. Inches of water sitting for days isn't something you just clean up with a shop vac and dry out with a heater, not unless that's your only option and you don't mind putting up with damage, the extent of which you probably don't fully know. If the power is out he probably can't do much to clean it up anyway, even if he has a generator he may not be able to get fuel for it.

When we had a major storm roll through my area back around 2007 it knocked down several transmission lines and the power was out in some areas for over a week. That included power for gas stations so even a lot of people that had generators couldn't get fuel for them. One can argue that people should be more prepared, gas stations included, but nothing like that had ever happened before in my lifetime. I remember stocks of generators were depleted quickly so there were a lot of people who couldn't get one.

[james_s]

(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.

I don't have a crawl space but wish I did. Not because I enjoy spending time crawling around in them, but the ground floor is much less cold in the winter when there's something other than a concrete slab underneath. It's also nice to have access under the floors in order to run wires or plumbing, mine is all in the ceiling above the ground floor of the daylight basement and only the portion above the laundry room that has a suspended ceiling is accessible without cutting holes in sheetrock. I'd consider a crawl space to be a nice luxury, the edge case of preventing burst pipes during a long term hibernation can be dealt with. Our cabin has drain valves at the low points so I drain the plumbing as part of winterizing it. Pex piping is also fairly tolerant of freezing but I like the fact that copper is anti-microbial and I've had bad experience with the water tasting like plastic in some places I've been.

[rsjsouza]

(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.

I don't have a crawl space but wish I did.

I wish as well. When we did a foundation repair on the house, the cost of fixing the pipes under the house was significant and nobody guarantees the clay soil will never move again, thus a damocles' sword.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Retrieving half-liquefied possum carcasses from a 2' high crawl space in the middle of August in NC is not fun.
Ripping out 400 sq.ft. fiberglass insulation infested with mouse turds, urine, balls of desiccated ants falling on your face not fun.
Water seeping through the bricks causing major damp issues not fun.
Someone breaking into the crawl space and trying to steal the dehumidifier...it was too heavy to move so they left it unplugged. I wasn't living there. When I went to check on things, I opened the front door only to find mold on all the carpets and walls throughout the house.

But access to the wiring etc etc, useful.

I'll amend my statement to say that if I now know exactly what to look out for with a crawl space and can instantly spot major potential i$$ues.

That house was a nightmare but a great lesson. Coming from a land of masonry houses, I had no idea about typical lumber houses in the US. The sellers knew about the damp issue and saw me coming. During one viewing, I mentioned a musty smell. In the UK, it wouldn't have alarmed me - a quick wipe-down with bleach would have solved the problem. Now, if I sense the slightest hint of mold, I'm gone.

[james_s]

Well it's important to keep the crawlspace closed up, one of the vent screens fell off my mother's place and I had to pull a similar animal corpse out of there, as well as rats got in and left droppings all over and peed on the insulation around the heating ducts, yuck! I don't think that's all that typical though, it's just one of those things that can happen but not something I'd expect everyone to experience. Mold is also not typically a problem unless something leaks, however some climates are probably a lot more likely to experience mold from general humidity than others. Then there are challenges in leaving a place unoccupied for any length of time. Stuff deteriorates surprisingly quickly when nobody is there to care for it, and thieves make the situation worse. Having your dehumidifier unplugged is annoying but at least they didn't rip out all of the copper pipes and wiring to sell for scrap. Hope ownership can be a pain, but IMHO it sure beats paying someone else's mortgage by way of rent payments.

[VK3DRB]

Texas definitely has weird weather. This one was a doozer, compounded by privatisation of energy supplies.

Two weird experiences when I lived in Austin:

I was about 5km from home when I called my wife using phone patch via the W5EBJ repeater to tell her it was snowing. She said it was not snowing at home. A couple of sandbaggers called in to say it was not snowing where they were either. That was the only snow I saw in Texas in the winter of 1992/93 and it seemingly only snowed in a very small area.

We did a day trip to Senora. On the way back it rained ice (not snow). The helical antenna on top of the car became a big block of ice. The doors were thick and heavy with ice. But when we got back to Austin, I never saw any other car caked with ice. I got looks from various people as I drove into town and was queried at out local Texaco petrol station as to where I had been. There had been no precipitation in Austin.

[Zero999]

Most of those "freeze" events would have been for about an hour or two before sunrise - not enough time to freeze pipes. This recent event is different. Prolonged and extreme low temperatures will freeze pipes quickly.

A hard freeze may be rare, but not unheard of.  There have been enough similar events in the past few decades to give sufficient warning.  It's analogous to earthquake protection here in SoCal--severe earthquakes are 'rare' but can happen anytime, so building codes and other policies have been adapted to be ready for them. 

Where I live there would also be devastation if we got weather like Texas just had.  The difference is that the area has never, ever had such weather as opposed to having it once a decade.

I wholeheartedly agree. Buildings and infrastructure should be designed to withstand once in a lifetime events. Take Cambridge, England, for example. Typical of Western Europe, the average temperatures for the warmest and coldest months are fairly moderate, but the record hot and cold temperatures are more extreme, although not to the same extent as many places in Texas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge#Climate

We have had problems in the UK with infrastructure being inadequate for temperature extremes, more so with hot, than cold in recent years.

Of course we need to accept that sometimes bad things will happen, due to the weather and there's nothing that can be done about it. Note that in Cambridge the record February high is close to the average high for late-May/early-June, which has also recorded freezing temperatures. Both extremis can completely destroy crops. A late frost in June will kill an entire grape crop and record warmth in February can cause plants to grow far too early, only to be frozen later.

[JohnnyMalaria]

As a former resident of Melbourn, Cambs., and College Station, TX, and now NC, I can honestly say the climate extremes in the UK are nothing like here. Some once-in-a-lifetime events just cannot be accommodated without changing the entire way properties are built. For example, I don't think any typical house in the US could survive a direct tornado hit. However, most are engineered to withstand at least Cat 1 hurricanes. But as current events in the UK show, flooding is the major issue.

As I stated previously, the mentality to construction is different here compared to the UK (at least).

[coppice]

As a former resident of Melbourn, Cambs., and College Station, TX, and now NC, I can honestly say the climate extremes in the UK are nothing like here. Some once-in-a-lifetime events just cannot be accommodated without changing the entire way properties are built. For example, I don't think any typical house in the US could survive a direct tornado hit. However, most are engineered to withstand at least Cat 1 hurricanes. But as current events in the UK show, flooding is the major issue.

As I stated previously, the mentality to construction is different here compared to the UK (at least).

That's because Texas exports its heat to the UK, and we are very thankful for it. At least until the Day After Tomorrow.

[Renate]

I concur that there is a sharp contrast between the best of European building practice and the worst of American.
Let's add to that the risk of fire.
It's easy to total an American house in a fire; a concrete European house is not so vulnerable.
Quick, cheap and shoddy is an American standard.

[JohnnyMalaria]

I concur that there is a sharp contrast between the best of European building practice and the worst of American.
Let's add to that the risk of fire.
It's easy to total an American house in a fire; a concrete European house is not so vulnerable.
Quick, cheap and shoddy is an American standard.

That was true in England until 1666.

[Renate]

That was true in England until 1666.

I take the precaution of burying my cheese in the back yard.

[Zero999]

As a former resident of Melbourn, Cambs., and College Station, TX, and now NC, I can honestly say the climate extremes in the UK are nothing like here. Some once-in-a-lifetime events just cannot be accommodated without changing the entire way properties are built. For example, I don't think any typical house in the US could survive a direct tornado hit. However, most are engineered to withstand at least Cat 1 hurricanes. But as current events in the UK show, flooding is the major issue.

As I stated previously, the mentality to construction is different here compared to the UK (at least).

Interesting. What did you do in Cambridge?

Yes, the climate is far less extreme than Texas.

One thing to note is we do go through phases of cold winters and extreme heat in summer. The last three summers all had an an extreme for us, heatwaves with temperatures in the high 30s C and around the turn of last decade, we had a series of cold winters with lows around -15C. Nowhere near as extreme as the US, but I believe a similar phenomenon occurs there too. Changes in sea surface temperatures and solar activity, can cause extreme seasons occur over a short period. I wouldn't be surprised if next winter is similar.

As a former resident of Melbourn, Cambs., and College Station, TX, and now NC, I can honestly say the climate extremes in the UK are nothing like here. Some once-in-a-lifetime events just cannot be accommodated without changing the entire way properties are built. For example, I don't think any typical house in the US could survive a direct tornado hit. However, most are engineered to withstand at least Cat 1 hurricanes. But as current events in the UK show, flooding is the major issue.

As I stated previously, the mentality to construction is different here compared to the UK (at least).

That
That's because Texas exports its heat to the UK, and we are very thankful for it. At least until the Day After Tomorrow.

That's one of the oldest myths in the book or meteorology. The UK gets very little heat from the Gulf Stream. The reason why Western Europe is colder, than corresponding parallels on the eastern side of North America, is because it's downwind of a large expanse of ocean. Western North America has similar temperatures to equivalent latitudes in Western Europe, because of the westerlies blowing over the warm Pacific. The east coasts of large landmasses are uniquely cold. The nearby sea limits summer warmth and in winter, the wind has blown over a the freezing continent, although it's a little less cold then, than further inland.

For example, we normally think of Canada as a cold country, but the west coast has a similar climate to Northern Europe, with Vancouver and Calais having similar average temperatures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver#Climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calais#Geography_and_climate

Don't believe the scare stories about the Gulf Stream changing its course, plunging Europe into the freezer. It will affect our climate, but as long as the prevailing wind blows from the west and we're next to the Atlantic, we'll be milder than Eastern Canada.

[nali]

As a former resident of Melbourn, Cambs.,

OT but, part of my old stomping ground as a teenager! My parents were regulars at the Cambridge Motel until it closed.

My Dad was always surprised I could remember the name of Dimos who ran the place... it was too much work to try to explain to him about MOSFETs 

[JohnnyMalaria]

Interesting. What did you do in Cambridge?

Drove mindlessly up and down the A10 to Ware until I found an escape route to the sun

That's one of the oldest myths in the book or meteorology. The UK gets very little heat from the Gulf Stream. The reason why Western Europe is colder, than corresponding parallels on the eastern side of North America, is because it's downwind of a large expanse of ocean. Western North America has similar temperatures to equivalent latitudes in Western Europe, because of the westerlies blowing over the warm Pacific. The east coasts of large landmasses are uniquely cold. The nearby sea limits summer warmth and in winter, the wind has blown over a the freezing continent, although it's a little less cold then, than further inland.

I have to disagree. Cambridge, for example, is the same latitude as Labrador. Much of the rain in NW Europe is exactly because of the moist air carried by the gulf stream eventually cooling enough to dump the water. Watch the path tropical waves off the west coast of Africa typically take - they head towards the east US and then travel up the coast on the gulf stream only to dump on Europe. The reasons that make NW Europe warmer than the American Atlantic coastal regions at the same latitude are the same as why the Pacific waters are much cooler than the Atlantic equivalents - large clockwise currents in the northern hemisphere.

[Caliaxy]

One of the many reasons not to live in Texas. lol

Ha!!... I'm reminded of one of the (factual) quotes by some Aussies when Americans talk about how everything
is so big there....  Well, in Australia, we have a single privately owned cattle station in the out-back, that is
bigger than the whole State of Texas !!  I don't know what it proves, but it's true! haha... 

That reminds me of a joke:
The old farmer from Texas says, "When I had my ranch, I could get up in the morning, get in my truck, drive all day and still be on my property."
The old farmer from Kentucky said, "Yeah, I had a truck like that once too... "

[bsfeechannel]

During the -15°C night, where temps inside the house reached 2°C

Those temperatures I can only find inside my fridge. Living in such conditions for me is inconceivable.

[rsjsouza]

I wholeheartedly agree. Buildings and infrastructure should be designed to withstand once in a lifetime events.

Would you design your house for once in a lifetime event such as this? 


It is impossible to predict any future event...

[vad]

Would you design your house for once in a lifetime event such as this? 

And even a $1.37bn brick and mortar house can be plagued by mold:

“The palace was built using plasterboard attached to main walls and the mould appeared between the concrete walls and plasterboard.

A source close to the Kremlin confirmed to BBC Russian that mould was a real problem: "the palace had been completed and was used for several years but then fungus appeared, accompanied by an unpleasant smell."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943

[JohnnyMalaria]

Would you design your house for once in a lifetime event such as this? 

It is impossible to predict any future event...

The builders obviously predicted this and laid the foundation 20' from where it was meant to be.

Some homeowner's policies don't cover damage from aerial objects. There used to be a time (I hope it's over) that blocks of blue ice would smash through people's roofs in the south of England. It was the contents of the chemical toilets from commercial aircraft.