Happy New Year’s – Your Drain is Frozen!

Last week, right before New Year’s Eve, our drain froze.

My theory is that this was the Universe punishing me for my gloating post about “It’s December and our drain STILL isn’t frozen and it’s -40 outside and our drain STILL isn’t frozen. Lalalala!”

Maple’s theory is that the drain was just gradually accruing ice for the past few weeks and because we didn’t use the drain much when my family was in town it just completely froze shut during that week.

So we had a frozen drain. And we were trying to siphon (by mouth) the hot water we had poured down the drain – in an attempt to melt the ice- out of the drain and into a bucket. Did dirty water get everywhere in our little Garagehome? Yes. Did it seem like we were that much closer to living in an ol’ Serial Killer Den (with creeeepy water dripping everywhere on our cement floors? Yes. Was it really kinda gross and did someone (who writes a blog) have a tiny baby meltdown about the lack of running water (and resulting complications) in her home? Maybe.

On the bright side our friend Chrissy was over and she offered suggestions, laughter and Trailer Park Boys references. Due to the fact that our drain from our sink flows directly into our ground that we grow our food in Maple and I are always hesitant to throw anything like Drano (which wouldn’t have helped in this case anyway) or other harsh chemicals down the drain. We made the best good faith effort we could to siphon the water out (and really, Maple deserves all the credit for this. I pretty much refused to get any of that water in my mouth.) We thought we would watch and wait to see what happened. Maple’s big fear was that the drain would crack, but luckily that turned out not to happen. The water continued freezing up the drain but it didn’t crack the pipe and the ice didn’t pass the lip of the pipe. In a bad case scenario, it was the best case result.

So we’re back to a five-gallon bucket for the winter. And we’ll use the drain from late Spring to early Fall (roughly May-September up here.) It’s a bit of a bummer, seeing as how having a year-round drain was really, really nice, but I’m trying to see the loss of our year-round drain for what it is: a really good motivator to work our butts off on the Homehome this summer.

This was not good.

Not good at all. (All those shaded spots? Disgusting water on the floor.)

Maple assesses the situation.

Siphon, siphon, siphon.

Even when incredibly frustrated he finds laughter. These are the moments I know I was right to marry him.

Cheers and Love,

Maple and Me