Why aren't Texas homes built for Arctic weather

[vbhoutex]

Ed, 10 degrees is not Artic weather, maybe in summer but not winter. Texas homes would be better suited to withstand hurricane force winds had high surges along the coast. In the panhandle they should be built to handle tornadoes and everywhere else built for scorching summer heat. The occasional cold blast is way down the list......MGC

Not in the panhandle it isn't. The "cold blasts" are common in the panhandle area during the winter months. Many areas of the Davis mountains in SW TX experience extremely cold(for this far south) weather in the winter. Texas weather can not be lumped into one category, to say the very least.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Nobody ever worried about bursting pipes when I was a young'un living in New York. When I was stationed upstate New York, below zero (Farenheit) weather was common, and pipes never burst.

I will say, warming up the old 7 cyclinder 1976 Chysler Cordoba, that winter of 84-85, with 120k miles on it, a quart a week smoking habit, and a tendency to run on only 7 cyclinders until the engine got warm, would take 20 minutes before one could take the transmission out of "Park" without stalling the car. But it was big and roomy.


OK, New York may have a few more sub-freezing days each Winter than Texas, but since Arctc outbreaks are a fact of life in our idyllic corner of the mid-latitudes, there is no excuse for pipes bursting because of cold weather.

Do you think Houston should buy some snow removal equipment too?

YouTube Video- Yes, Houston needs snowplows.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Well, hmmmm....


Houston went over 19 years between minimal Cat 1 Hurricane Jerry and Cat 2 Hurricane Ike.


Less than a four year span between snow events.

Now, a hurricane is potentially more serious, but winter weather in our little garden spot, far from the Tropic of Cancer, usually under the Westerlies, with nothing between here and Siberia but barbed wire fences, is a whole lot more common.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Now, a hurricane is potentially more serious, but winter weather in our little garden spot, far from the Tropic of Cancer, usually under the Westerlies, with nothing between here and Siberia but barbed wire fences, is a whole lot more common.

I got a PM, that for, say, the Bolivar Peninsula, Hurricane Ike was a lot more serious than an Arctic weather outbreak.

True enough. Even in my neighborhood, 50 miles plus inland, still some homes with roof tarps.

But go another 50 or 100 miles inland, and hurricane damage is very unlikely, burst pipes from a prolonged sub-freezing episode isn't.


I was not minimizing Hurricane Ike on the barrier islands. Honest.

[Dionne]

Before moving south, I worked on the north slope of Alaska......300 miles above the Arctic circle.

We DO NOT experience arctic weather down here. We get cold air that has been pushed south.

It doesn't take arctic air to freeze pipes. 32F will do the trick. When it goes into the teens, my phone rings off the hook with broken pipe calls. They become expensive repairs. Last winter I did one where the water ran for several days before discovery......the bill was $17,000 in repairs.

If you have unprotected pipes all you have to do is let each supply line trickle a stream of water.....this will prevent a freeze up.

If you plan to insulate your pipes......hire a liscensed/bonded pro to do the work. It's not as simple as it sounds. All it takes is one small missed spot to make a freeze happen. In extreme climates we use heat tapes under the insulation.

Repairing broken pipes under trailers and homes on conventional foundations can be dangerous. People have been killed. Any time you combine standing water and electric under homes you run risks. We always lock out the electric when we have to go "swimming" as we call it.

And then you have the complete unknown risk factor.....snakes under homes. It has happened to me. And folks let me tell you.......there is nothing fun being under a home.....wet and cold and low crawling......with a damn snake watching you.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

I wish my location, considered to be sub arctic, had those warm a temperatures come winter.

Here there is no barb wire separating us from the north......we often drop down to the -50's.

We have also reached +48 Celsius (heat and humidity combined) as an all time high.

We are without a furnace (steam boiler) right now and an industrial electric heater is my bestest friend (we also have a number of small electric heaters blowing on our interior water pipes). We spent an awful lot of time in the -30's Celsius lately (-40's with windchill)......I'm looking so forward to seeing the Home Energy Advisor and the Furnace fellow (mid January) so we can get house warming heat again.

You would not believe how cold some rooms in this house got (they'd match your outdoor temps). Nothing like wearing long johns and a winter coat inside the house......and finding the hot water wasn't coming out of the tap (thankfully we caught that before it burst).

[Dionne]

I cannot imagine living that far north without wood heat.....at least as a back up. You are south of the northern tree line limit? When we still resided at our old homestead (latitude 62N) our primary source of heat was wood. Does your furnace use home heating oil? If so, you know what happens to the oil down around -40F. What will you do if your electric grid fails? Good luck to you, there is a lot of cold weather still to come! I would imagine a day of 32F would be T-shirt weather for you right now.

[Ed Mahmoud]

I had a Summer job in Monahans, Texas in 1994 when the temperature in nearby Odessa hit 118ºF (48º). Dry heat to be sure, but we worked that day in an Exxon lease in the sand dunes, and that sun reflecting back up off the sand and from above, that was tough.


I wouldn't want to live in the Canadian prairie provinces, dry air makes my skin itch, and I hate static shocks. But I respect the fact that the Western provinces is where most of the Canadians who believe in free enterprise and freedom live.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

We have a wood burning fireplace but the heat from the fire would pull more heat out of the house than it would contribute. We would love to get a gas insert with a fan.

We are south of the tree line....about a 2 hour drive from the US border.

If our grid fails we are SOL. :S The prairie lines however seem to be a lot tougher (they stand up to our blizzards/extremely high winds pretty well......power outages are pretty rare here.

However I gather we could rent a furnace and it would keep the basement and main floor above freezing (the two floors above would be very cold however). They could tap into our natural gas line (we just don't have the furnace vents in this house). We really don't want to rent when we are looking at the cost of a new boiler and maybe some pipes/rads. A new air blown furnace, and it's pipes, would cost us around $16,ooo.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

That dry air was the norm here Ed but times (and climate) seem to be changing.

A number of the summers here are getting very humid and we even had one winter were it was -30 and we had unbelievable humidity. I keep checking to see if the Bear Paw Sea is making a comeback.

[Dionne]

$16,000???? Wow! We recently replaced our furnace (natural gas) which also doubles as our A/C (outside compressor) in the summer. The total replacement was $2700....American dollars.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

That would be for the furnace and all the paraphernalia that goes with it. This house has just pipes and radiators (which is why we are hoping that they will be able to tap into our old system).

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

Canadian dollars a new steam boiler (95% efficient) is around $4,500. The air blown furnace would cost around 4,000 (same efficiency).

Dionne I really hope we can get the steam boiler......it has a enveloping heat that air blown just doesn't give and in this climate that's important (and steam heat is very cheap).

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

Ed here's one article regarding the heat wave we had: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/s ... -heat.html

It records Regina's temperature......ours was even warmer (we are situated in a valley and boy did we suffer in Japanese sauna conditions.....an awful lot here don't have A/C) That heat spell started at the beginning of the month and stayed with us until the end of it.

A little town in Manitoba broke Canada's all time heat/humidity record around that time.

Torontonians that were out west couldn't believe it.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

BTW I wish I could say we got a lot of rain to make that humidity but we didn't . We got the normal summer rain that a semi-arid (bordering on arid) region normally gets.

Somethings really, really wrong out there!

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

Our crops also ripened 2 months early (most were afraid that the seed shells would be empty). Some were.

[Dionne]

Get this.....we had an Iris bloom on New Years day.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

Dionne I'm guessing that was about 2 winters ago? That winter we were above zero more often then we were below (I think we only had one week that dropped down to the -20's).

We sure couldn't grow Iris's but I was ready to change my zone from a 2 to an 8 that winter (temperature wise it was like lower mainland BC here but the duration of the winter wasn't).

If that was this winter I'm amazed (we've had it cold for a long time)....it's almost been a winter of olden times here (we just haven't had that much snow.....but better than we've had in years).

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

Here's a picture taken up my block 2 days ago : http://www.flickr.com/photos/22450970@N07/3168874007/

And for that matter here's inside my boiler (the patch lasted 3 glorious days before the silicone failed again): http://www.flickr.com/photos/22450970@N07/3123951676/

My handle there is much nicer sounding than the one I use here. ;D

[Agua]

If you turn on a faucet to a trickle, your pipes won't freeze.