[achenatx]

in the texas freeze last year natural gas never stopped flowing even though power was out for about 5 days. I cut the wire to my gas furnace and put a plug on the end. My small 2kw generator could easily run the blower on my gas furnace.

We could still cook food on our gas stove.

We still had hot water from our gas hot water heater (though the pipes eventually froze).

[dontbenebby]

Glad you were able to get by, sincerely.

I've only been to Austin + gotten gas around Amarillo on my way to ABQ, but as someone who's spent most my life in blue dots in red states, it's hard to put into words how angry that entire fiasco made me.

(And I'm someone who nearly did an MFA in Creative Nonfiction... I am very good at describing how I feel, it's a very purposeful exploitation of American libel law -- propaganda is the selective telling of truths, especially paired with our libel laws[1])

Anyways to swing it back to the article/thread:

Were you not able to run a thin stream of water?

I was lucky to have water included in every place I rented up til now, I used to joke if a landlord angers me I can set up a flywheel, but it also meant if it gets cold I'm not worried about cost if I switch it to the warm side and run a thin stream while I sleep or go out for espresso.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case

[chomp]

During the freeze, my family of four lived in the living room huddled around the gas fireplace. Stayed relatively warm and only needed a C cell to keep the gas flowing.

[ChoGGi]

Hopefully this won't be needed, but if it happens again; keep a trickle of water running in the bathtub/etc. It'll help keep the pipes from freezing.

[liketochill]

Why did pipes freeze with furnace fan on generator ?

[vel0city]

It had never been below freezing that long since we started recording temperature for large parts of Texas. Thus, home designs often don't bother dealing with the question "but what if its freezing cold for days on end?", so there's no consideration to putting a water line on an exterior wall. We even have tankless water heaters mounted in or on the exterior wall with plumbing only protected by a metal plate if even that.

In places where it does regularly get below freezing for long stretches of time they do try and avoid putting water lines on exterior walls specifically for this reason.

[cplusplusfellow]

Poor construction of pipes in exterior walls with degraded insulation.

[dontbenebby]

>Poor construction of pipes

I thought it was more about lack of heat + insulation what about a pipe (absent other causes) makes it inherently more prone to freezing?

[cplusplusfellow]

Did you miss this part?

> in exterior walls with degraded insulation.