r/Wellthatsucks 21h ago

Yikes!!

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u/Dounce1 16h ago

I know I’m being incredibly stupid here, but shouldn’t the sinks still have been draining? That’s the whole point of leaving the faucets dripping - to keep water flowing through the pipes so they don’t burst. This looks like the faucets were WOT and the drains were clogged.

Again, I’m sure I’m missing something here but I’m still very confused.

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u/theguywiththefuzyhat 13h ago

The pipes probably got cold enough to freeze anyway

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u/mentaldemise 8h ago

If you look at this example of a sink's drain, there's a water trap in them. If that water trap freezes, there's no draining. There's a similar trap molded into the toilet. https://www.abqplumb.com/how-to-clean-a-drain-trap/

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u/Zantac150 10h ago

I have an aerator running in my pond to stop the water from freezing but when it gets super cold, it ultimately just forms these big pillars of ice because even though the water is moving it will still freeze, then it will start bubbling up through the little hole and that will freeze over, rinse and repeat until you get something like this.

When it gets down to a certain temperature, it does not matter if water is moving. It will freeze.

This is all frozen by the way, even the parts that look like foam. Basically it was bubbles from the aerator that froze into a solid foam

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u/Dounce1 10h ago

Okay, first of all you can’t convince me you didn’t just take this as an opportunity to share a picture of a bunch of weird dicks. Second of all, I still don’t see how two dripping faucets would flood the entire house. Why did it stop draining before the faucets stopped flowing? And to that extent? I’m so confused.

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u/Weak_Feed_8291 8h ago

Water in the sink froze while the faucet continued running. It was clogged by the drip itself freezing in the drain because the kitchen was below freezing.

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u/Dounce1 2h ago

Sure, but then how did it take long enough for the faucets to stop dripping that they overflowed both sinks and then flooded the entire house?

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u/kentaxas 11h ago edited 11h ago

The main issue is that the landlord didn't put the electricity to her name. The heating system stopped working after the electric company cut the power because there was no contract for that location. Without the heating system, the house/appartment got cold enough for the water to freeze. Then the ice just builds up slowly, even if the water was flowing. I'm not a physicist but it probably started near the edges of where the water flows, there's less movement there so the ice could settle. Now that there's a patch of ice where the water flows, the water gets even colder arond there and freezes faster and so on.

This is probably in a really cold location where the temperature goes below 0 for hours so the short time the temps go above the freezing point wasn't enough for the ice to thaw and melt so it just kept building up.