re: #71 Anymouse
Our local insurance agent is actually a pretty upstanding guy. He looked at (and photographed) the split pipe and seemed to think “frozen” was the correct call.
Plus, I didn’t know our insurance would cover shovelling all that dirt back into the basement and re-levelling it. If he was going to go the route of “not covered,” I think he probably wouldn’t have mentioned that.
True, our local agent is a pretty upstanding guy as well. But I’m such a cynic lately that I just assume the worst, that way I can be happy when a surprise happens.