Owning a house sucks

sometimes...

Last week, it got crazy cold here. Crazy cold. I'm talking -30 before the windchill. Yes, that's in Celcius. Cold.

I woke up tuesday morning, went about my morning routine. Pee, flush, wash hands.... oh shit. I turned on the taps and nothing came out. Then I heard that the toilet wasn't filling. My first thought was check the cold water too. Last year our hot water line froze but we still had cold water. Well I checked the cold water tap and nothing came out there either.

Crap Crap Crap.

Sadly, my first thought was, "It's too bad we're no longer in Ontario, I could have someone over here to figure this out for me in no time at all!" But alas, we're not. We're across the country with no one.

Now, before I continue with the story, let me give you some background info. We live in a mobile home. There is a skirting on the home to make it look like it goes right down to the ground, but it's not. There is something like a crawl space under our house. Now, in the winter, it does get cold under there. To combat problems, all the exposed water pipes have something called heat tape on them. Basically, the 'tape' connects to your electrical panel and in the cold months you make sure it's on. It uses the electricity to keep the pipes warm enough so they don't freeze. Everyone still with me?

Alright, so we have no water. I go to the electrical panel and make sure the heat tape switch didn't blow or whatever it's called. Then I checked all the windows to see if we had an ice rink outside our house. (A sign our water pipes burst from the ice expanding) So far so good. Just to be sure I open the front door to double check. I look down, and surprise! There just hanging out of the door are my keys. Well, we have no water, but in spite of my stupidity/pregnancy brain we still have both vehicles in the driveway and all our electronics in our house.

I finally get ahold of my husband and give him the bad news. He's pretty slow and bored at work becuase of the cold weather as well, so I let him take over. He calls a plumber and they say they will be by in the afternoon. Austin and I sit around and wait.... and wait. They finally showed up around 5pm, very apologetic to the fact it's been crazy busy for them. They get under the trailer, then come to give me the bad news. Our heat tape isn't working, it needs to be replaced.

It's also dark out and will take twice as long to actually repair so I make the executive decision to have them come back the next day. Thankfully they were there bright and early. They spent hours crawling around under my house in stupidly cold temperatures and by noon I had water again.

I could have hugged them. I didn't though. lol. Something just shy of $1,000 and I had water again. Yay, but boo to having to shell out the money. That's why owning a house sucks sometimes.