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The Main Squeeze - "Hotel California"

10
Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))2/19/2021 12:45:03 am PST

I just heard back from a buddy who lives in Dallas, he had driven down with his family to Galveston Island to winterize their vacation home just in time for the cold snap to hit.

He wrote back to say that he is safe and sound. I re-post his mail here:

“Last Saturday I made the trip to Galveston’s Home Despot to buy split foam tubing to insulate outside pipes. No such luck, all sold out, so I bought my second choice, aluminized-mylar-coated bubble wrap insulation.
I secured the pipes and all was well, then on Sunday we lost power. With the outside temp at 25 and the inside at 45 it was time to cut the extra aluminum wrap into 6 ft. lengths and tape them together with the extra aluminum tape to make emergency blankets.
Mylar easily slides off a bed, so we binder clipped the improvised blankets to existing ones. Eventually the inside temperature fell to 29 degrees downstairs and 33 upstairs, but the improvised blankets saved our bacon - we weren’t comfortable, but were warm enough. When power returned late Tuesday we fueled the car - a good thing as power soon went out again and gas pumps stopped functioning.
On Wednesday as it warmed to 35 degrees we noticed that one of the outside pipes had burst, thus we needed to shut off the water. With no running water but a full tank of gas we decided to return to Dallas.
The road back was icy, and the trip took eight hours, but we made it.
Two projects have been on my bucket list - energy and water self-sufficiency. After this experience both projects will be expedited.