The Optimist Would Welcome The Thaw

Yesterday, we awoke to find the taps in the bathroom sporting little icicles- not good.

The bathroom window was encrusted in little ice explosions!

Minus 12 degrees Celsius! Eeek!

Yes, I expect that, by now, you realise that it's cold here at the moment, but there appears to be a slight thaw today, as we very suddenly found ourselves ankle deep in water in the kitchen. Burst pipe! It was sickening to hear the steady pouring of water inside the wall, and witness the tortoise tsunami make its way across the kitchen. After turning off the water in the cellar, and after eliminating sponges, towels and the mop from our rescue party, we used dust pans as scoops to collect up at least ten big buckets-full of icy water. I think the floor will survive, as it's vinyl laminate with concrete underneath. Kevin had to cut open the wall, yes, the wall I've just recently badly painted in shades of cafe au lait, and there it was, a completely detached section of pipe. Hes's out there now with his copper pipe and blow torch...

After the scoop up

The right tools for the job!

The problem area...

We'll have to pack in more insulation into that section of wall and around the pipes... if that's even possible! The pipes are lagged, the cavity is puffed out with fluff-puff. The wall is made of stone and is a metre thick. It's the wall that houses the toilet cistern, and that's not been flushing for four days now. We use a bucket filled up in the shower. Nice, eh? Kevin says he's going to bring a section of pipe with a separate stop cock into the inside of the kitchen wall (That'll look nice!). I'll try to take a photo of his construction before he bats me away...