So, the bathroom pipes froze on Friday. They were thawed, nothing burst and the faucets were left flowing. Sunday morning we awoke to a frozen (again!) hot water pipe to the master bath. Turns out that BOTH hot and cold water need to be left on in order to keep pipes from freezing. Easy enough in our guest bath because there's one knob to control the faucet. The master bath, however, has separate controls for hot and cold. Getting a low flow mixture to produce tepid water, is not very easy at it turns out.
In addition, both pipes to the washing machine in our laundry room froze (no where near the bathroom pipes, but another interior wall). This room was added to the main house sometime in the last 50 years (a guesstimate). But was poorly constructed with no insulation; and the radiator that was installed doesn't work. With sub-zero temps that room is just straight up cold. After double checking the pipes in our cellar/basement/crawl space area, we determined the freeze wasn't down there, but near the tap. Utilizing our multi-purpose thawing tool, my hair dryer, we got the washing machine up and running. Only to discover during the rinse cycle, that there was an obstruction in the drain pipe (seriously?!), as soapy, dirty laundry water was spewing into the air. There was some cursing, pausing of the washer in mid-cycle and scrambling to find large, utility towels to mop of the mess. It's a good thing we had a hot water load of wash in there, because without any intervention on our part (save time and stopping the machine), whatever was clogging the drain (I think it was an ice-chunk) resolved itself. We have now invested in a space heater for that room.
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