House and Gas Bills, Part 1

I wanted to post an update about our house, but first a recap of the odyssey:

In February 2008, the water pipes above our kitchen froze and then burst. It's a long story that you can read about in my previous posts. The contractor who fixed our house told us he thought the problem was the full bathroom that we have on our (uninsulated) third floor of our house. He thought the pipes froze on the third floor, and then froze downward.

During the summer in 2008, we fully insulated the third floor of our house (or as much as was practical to insulate). It ended up being a big job, but it was worth it if it would prevent our pipes from freezing again. Well, it turns out that wasn't the cause of the problem, because in December 2008 our pipes froze again. Since we knew exactly where the pipes were, we opened up the ceiling in the right spot, and Heimlich thawed out the pipes with a hairdryer before they burst. In the process, we discovered where cold air was entering our house and fixed it, hopefully preventing our pipes from freezing again in the future.

For the past six months or so, we have been living with holes in our kitchen ceiling. We had gotten to the point where we didn't even notice them anymore.


Well, I finally got around to fixing the holes (see above picture). We also placed a (borrowed) remote temperature sensor in the ceiling near the pipes. We will monitor the temperature near the pipes over the next winter, and if everything is hunky dory (translation: if the pipes don't freeze again) we'll finish off the job next spring.

More tomorrow.