Cold spell

 Worth reading again:

https://wmckemie.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-cold-week.html

as we approach a similar episode.

Despite good warning, I find myself relatively poorly prepared.  My rainwater collection system is not working well.  I attempted to put some well water in the tanks today and found my "good water" well is not pumping water.  And it is just too brutal out there to address the problem.

I did test my under house water pipe heating and it seems to be working.  Using 420 watts.

I have a good supply of firewood and have a MUCH better wood stove than in 1983.

Still, I expect an uncomfortable period.

 

2/14/2021 about 1pm

The above from 2/10.  We have been slightly below freezing for a couple of days now.  Everything has been lightly covered with ice for those ~2 days.  A few branches around the place    are down due to ice load.  No walkway or nearby hazardous icing.  Reports of heavier icing in Lytton Springs and Lockhart.  No nearby reports of power outages.  Right now, closest are Rosanky and Camp Swift, 20+ miles away.  Forecast remains for much heavier ice and snow for a day or longer and plummeting temperatures down to 0-10 deg.  So far, I've noticed nothing below 27 deg.  There are reports of frozen water well heads.  I think I have my well water system well drained.  I'm putting a little heat on my rainwater pressure pump and it continues to work.  We may have near a week of below freezing temperatures before us.

PowerWall seems to have automatically shifted into "prepare for power failure" mode and is keeping battery at 100% (by using grid power that is still available).  Prior to the alarming forecasts, I had it set to maintain 50% or more charge.  The goal is to try to start a grid down period with as high a PW charge as possible.

Should grid go down, I will be without water and internet service, both powered from another electric service meter.  Back up is stored bottled water and cell phone hotspot.

Having emptied my trailer parked in front of the house, I hauled another load of firewood yesterday.  After unhitching the loaded trailer in front of the house, I decided to haul a bucket of ash with coals to try to start a pile of pine trees burning at the cleared new PV project site.  In looping around to house toward an open gate, I ran into a big tree with the white imiev.  That due to iced over windshield.  Spilled live coals in passenger floor and skinned myself up.  Air bags did not deploy.  Car damaged but not disabled.  Carrying on, I failed to get the pine trees started. 

I have a 100w light bulb rigged under my kitchen sink which has a history of freezing up.  I will turn on the under house plumbing heat when outside temperatures approach 20 deg.  That 500+ additional watts will mean that a full PW charge will not carry me through a grid down night.  My golf cart battery PW supplementing 36v battery is at about 40v.  Good enough.

Full "hunker down" mode engaged.

6pm

So it begins.  Went to take an early shower and found no hot water flow.  No cold water into the water heater.  22-23 deg outside.  I fear I should have replaced the underpinning at the rear of the house when I was working on installing that water heater more than a year ago.  Cold water is still flowing.  I plugged in the under house water pipe heat tape.  I moved the heater in the bathroom to the water heater closet but I have little hope that it will thaw things out.  Resolved to sleeping on the couch and tending fire all night since I need to leave doors open through the kitchen to the rear of the house.  Bah!  Humbug!  If the weather is better tomorrow, I can try to get some heat under the rear of the house and stack some hay bales where underpinning is missing.  I fear I will be without hot water for 3+ days.

 On the plus side, the stove has been not putting out much heat all day due to trying to burn some big sticks.  Now, stuffed full of ~3" logs, it is really cranking.   The flue pipe temperature is near 600 deg.  Not glowing yet but dangerously hot.  I'm going to leave it that way for a while in hope of getting some heat to the rear of the house.

7:30pm

It just gets better and better!  No cold water flow now!  And, it is "only" 21 deg. The way it came to a slow halt makes be suspect that the pressure pump is not working.  Next, the grey water will stop draining.   I had roughly replaced tin underpinning and had plans to cover the gaps better with carpet and put a light bulb under the house at that point.  Now, I have little faith that that will do any good.  I'm vainly putting about 1800 watts into try to keep already frozen stuff from freezing.

I am successfully pulsing the wood stove.  Bringing it up to ~500 deg, then throttling it back to ~200 deg.

A long and painful night before me.  Followed by a long and painful week.  It'll feel SO good when it stops!

About 1:30am, ERCOT instituted state wide "rolling blackouts".  Bluebonnet seemed to be doing 22 minutes on, 22 minutes off.

2/15/2021 9:30am

Blackouts continue.  PowerWall is handling well, keeping power up when grid is down, charging from grid when it is up.

I'm glad that's over.  Hoping to bolster the grid some today.  But I'm producing a tiny amount.  Why?

The snow is sticking to the panels better than expected.  Even to the steeply sloping ones.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/hBMJJPDAkECPk3SH9 

 

02/16/2021  5am Tuesday morning

 About done with another bad night.  I've become somewhat aware of the big scene.  The utilities have been instructed by ERCOT to implement "rolling blackouts" in order to keep the grid working without sufficient power to satisfy demand.  ERCOT has dictated that circuits serving critical services will not be shed.  In Austin, the absence of demand from all shedable circuits has barely been sufficient to keep the grid up but has left near all shedable circuits without power for days.  Those on the non shedable circuits seem to be unaware of their good fortune.  I am on a shedable circuit but, with a PowerWall, the outages have been manageable.  Since 1:30 am yesterday morning, my circuit has been off about 22 minutes and on for 22 minutes.  Last night that off period had stretched to about an hour and a half by the time I went to bed.    I got up about 2am and found the grid up but my PW thinking it was down and still supplying power to the house.  Also found a very weak fire in bad need of tending.  In probably a vain attempt to keep the entire house as "warm" as possible, I have most doors open to allow wood fire heat to reach all parts of the house.  The kitchen and bathroom were/are about 25 deg while outside temp is below 10 deg.  I found the PW down to 22% which could be depleted around dawn.  I got the PW recognizing the grid again; it is charged back to about 80% so I hope to harvest some PV energy later today.  

News just reported that 88% of Bluebonnet customers are without power so it seems certain that mine will soon disappear.

02/19/2021 7 am

My above fear was unfounded.  My last cutoff had been experienced and I enjoyed full grid power for the last few days of the event.

Looks like it is over.  Austin reported above freezing yesterday afternoon for the first time in 144 hours.  They also reported the 1983 episode was 140 hours.  So, not much difference in the two.  My memory likely is failing me but I don't recall so much snow and ice in 1983 and I don't recall power failures/cutoffs.

Some general comments:

The PowerWall performed very well.  My maximum cutoff duration was 2-3 hours.  The PW would not have done well had the cutoffs been a day or two; many experienced those durations.  The problem was snow covered PV panels which prevented me from producing much power during the entire period.  I guess, had my cutoffs been longer, I would have been out clearing panels.

The cutoffs were rather counter productive though I don't see how else the grid operators might have responded.  I would get cut off, then when I had power again, I would pull more power to recharge the PW battery to restore energy expended during the cutoff.  That was a net negative due to the inefficiency of charging and discharging a battery.  In addition, whatever modest power I could offer the grid was not supplied during the cut offs.  That problem would have been much more sever with cutoffs during sunny warmer weather as might occur during summers.

The steeply sloped panels did shed snow better than more gentle slopes but snow did accumulate at the base of the panels where they are sitting on the ground.  Elevating the lower ends would have been beneficial but too costly.  Roof top panels seemed to shed snow faster than gentle slope ground mounts.

Thankfully, my internet access remained up during the entire event.  But only while I had grid power; my internet connection entry point has no power failure back up.

I was surprised by my firewood use.  I used about three times the amount I expected and had in stock.  I exhausted my "stored at cutting site" supply and cut some more yesterday.  My "at house" supply is very low and I will have to replenish.

I lost water very early in the event, when temperature hit about 22; I was without water during the entire event.  That mostly due to oversight on my part; I failed to replace remove house underpinning.  My pressure pump, previously protected in a water closet of the burned guest house, had poor protection would almost certainly have frozen (and is frozen now) sometime during the event.

Should this 50 year event recur in the next few years, I should be prepared by having better water pump protection and better under house protection.  Also, I should have greater PowerWall battery capacity.

02/20/2021

I ALMOST got my water restored yesterday.  I got my well pumping water. Surprisingly there was no freeze damage there.  I got my rainwater tanks to house pressure pump working.  Surprisingly there was no freeze damage there.  I pressurized my house and was thrilled for find water flow to kitchen sink which is on a north wall and the most susceptible area for freeze damage in the past.  Then, I found my bathroom on south side of house flooding.  A sink supply line had come loose.  I turned off the easily accessible cutoff valve.  But water flow noise was coming from under the bathroom floor.  I cut all water back off and am waiting for things to dry out so I can dig out access to the under bathroom area.

I had a 100w bulb under the kitchen sink, judging it to be most threatened.  Never before having had any bathroom freeze ups, I failed to put any supplemental heat there other than leaving the door open.

 2/23/2021 9pm

The pain continues.  I have repaired or capped off all house leaks.  But faucets do not flow even with good pressure on the supply line.  It could be valve orifices plugged by debris that was loosened in the pipes by the freezes.  Anyway, I've been without water for 10-11 days and no clear prospects for getting it working again.  There are few plumbing supplies available in stores.  Fortunately, I have a fair supply of some of the more common parts I use in my irrigation work. Plumbers are booked solid at least three weeks out.  On the other hand, weather has been very nice and well above freezing for several days.  Since I've been without a proper shower for near two weeks and with no immediate solution in sight, I'm considering rigging an outside shower somewhere.  I did some laundry in Lockhart today.

2/25/2021

The pain continues to continue.

Yesterday I discovered that a tank that supplies water to my house pressure pump was empty rather than full as I had though.  The source for filling the tank is the across the road well which has my best quality well water.  I found it was not pumping water reliably.  I suspect a ground water level drop below pump depth.  That has recently been a problem in this area.  I have a well service/drilling guy scheduled for "sometime" next week.  I was surprised to get such a prompt appointment.  Meanwhile, I will explore the possibility of putting lower quality water from another well into the storage tank.  Longer term plans are to get at least one other well converted to high quality water; it is a matter of cementing off a higher aquifer layer.  Sadly, all that does not mean that I have no house plumbing problems.

I carried my laundry into Lockhart in a big duffel bag and carried back the unexpectedly wet laundry in a pile in the back of the car.  All dryers were either broken or in use.  Since it seems I will be forced to continue using the laundromat for a while longer, I extracted a few plastic laundry baskets from my large stock.  I used to use the baskets for spinach picking baskets.

2/26/2021

The pain continues... to continue... to continue

I thought the end was in sight!  I got the less desirable water into the storage tank which gave the pressure pump a good water supply.   I pressurize the line to the house.  Things look good.    This morning I had several water outlets in the house flowing!  I did a load of laundry.  I had cold water in the kitchen sink!  I could wash my hands and brush my teeth inside at the kitchen sink!  I washed a potato before baking!  I assumed the non flowing outlets were clogged and was in the process of trying to take apart the shower valves to clear the supposed clogs.  But I noticed the remote pressure pump was running continuously just shy of it's 60 psi cutoff pressure.  So, I went looking for more leaks.  And was "rewarded" by finding one in the middle of the house.  The semi-good news is that I can keep the house shutoff valve closed and only open it briefly when I want to use some water in the house.  Now, I either wait weeks for a plumber or I start digging again to try to gain access to the leak.  Will probably start digging tomorrow.  Or maybe plan a vacation.  I had repaired other leaks by digging under the bathroom on the south side of the house.  This leak looks most accessible from under the kitchen on the north side.  BAH!  HUMBUG!

3/11/2021

After finding the under kitchen leak to be hot water line, I cut out the offending T and turned off the water heater expecting to get cold water through out the house.  Then, I found a cold water leak near the rear of the house.  More digging to gain access.  It turned out to be a split 1/2" steel pipe well suited for a "pipe repair clamp.  No 1/2" repair clamps in the area.  All plumbing stores report getting shorted on their orders.  So, I just jerry rigged a fix which worked.  Cold water in the kitchen sink for the first time since April 14.  Very near a month.  Did a load of laundry.  No cold water in the bathroom for yet unknown reasons.  Haven't found more leaks.  Will look for a flood in the morning.  Best to look at my pressure pump and see if it is cycling.  The pressure pump is NOT cycling!  Meaning I have no undetected leaks.  Just experienced the simple and nearly forgotten great pleasure of washing a potato, to be baked, in the sink under running water.  First load of laundry is on the line.  Waiting to get rained on.

The end is in sight.  Plenty of pain before me, though.  At least two semi-complex fixes which involve threading steel pipe in the cramped quarters under the house.  No pipe threaders are found locally.  I am waiting or an online order to be delivered.  I'm slowly and painfully prevailing over this trial.

3/17/2021

I just had my first real shower, well, "semi-real", since 2/13/2021.  Five or six weeks.  As I had been planning, I rigged a small 120v 1500 watt heater on the old outside of sauna shower.  It was magnificent!  Soaped my head with shampoo.  Scrubbed.  Sluiced off with water spray.  Same for rest of body.  I still haven't attacked my under house plumbing.  I fell a couple of weeks ago and, apparently, damaged my replacement left knee.  It keeps getting more and more painful.  Walking even short distances is daunting and halting.  Next week, I attempt to see my knee guy.  I do use cold water out of kitchen sink and have done several loads of laundry.

I had hoped to have a "man camp" RV trailer out by the guest house slab by now.  I could live out there pretty straight forwardly.