Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
With the change in weather, Josie started feeling like she was coming down with the flu, and said “we have to go
home.” Knowing that it would be at least 30 degrees colder at our house, I reluctantly agreed, packed up our travel
trailer, and headed back to our home in the snows of Tahoe. The moment we set foot inside our front door, we knew
something was wrong. Our home was stone cold. When we left for our trip, we had set the furnace thermostat at around
60˚F, but with outside temperatures well below zero, the interior of our house was so cold that all of our indoor plants
were frozen solid. I immediately ran to the kitchen faucet and found it to be frozen too. Checking the bathrooms next,
whenItookthelidoffthetoilettanks,Ifoundthateachtankcontainedasurrealthree-dimensional forestof10-inch-long
ice daggers suspended in slushy water. Had we returned a few hours later, all of our toilets would have been frozen
solid and shattered by the expanding ice!
Immediately I built a fire in our woodstove and crawled under the house to check our furnace. It appears that
Murphy's Law had struck when we were out of town. The igniter on our furnace just happened to fail during the coldest
snap in several years, when no one was there to realize that anything had gone wrong. I got a heater going in the in-
sulated crawl space under our house, and a few hours later the pipes thawed out. Miraculously no pipes had burst and
our kitchen faucet was the only plumbing fixture to split from the expansion of ice when it froze solid. We had narrowly
avoided a major catastrophe. Had we come home the next day, as I had suggested, we would have returned to find
every plumbing fixture (including the valves inside the clothes and dishwasher), plus most of the pipes inside our walls,
split and ruined (probably at least $20,000 in damage). And if the pipes had thawed before we returned home, the split
pipes would have flooded the entire structure, ruining the sheetrock and flooring, and quite possibly turning our home
into a toxic mold pit.
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Key Items to Have on Hand in Your Home
Whether you live in a harsh northern climate, or a more southern climate that only sees sub-
freezing weather on occasion, it is a good idea to keep the following items on hand:
• Enough comforters and warm clothing so that you and your family could sleep and
function inside your home 24/7 if it was as cold inside your house as it gets outside
during a winter's cold snap. Electric blankets and most furnaces won't work without
electricity. This is a very real worst-case scenario that happens all too often during
extended wintertime blackouts.
• Backup sources of heat for both cooking and space heating. A woodstove is my fa-
vorite, as it can be used for both, and is quite safe and comfortable. During extended
power failures, a large wood pile will usually last much longer than stored propane,
kerosene, or gasoline, and if you live in a forested area, in a pinch you could forage
for dead wood to burn in your stove. See
chapter 4
for more information on these
items, and for safety precautions concerning carbon monoxide poisoning.
• Typical “ski clothing” or backcountry clothing for extreme weather such as mittens,
insulated boots, woolen or insulated pants, and a heavy coat or down jacket. Even if
you are not an outdoorsman, having that kind of clothing on hand is cheap insurance
for dealing with an extended power failure during extreme winter weather. When the
rest of your body is properly clothed, a warm hat is critical for maintaining body
