fitzw | Deep Freeze: Day 1 (Friday) -- Part II

I awoke to a phone call from downstairs at some time between 7:30 AM and 8:00 AM. My mother wanted to know if I was doing anything in the basement, as there was a lot of banging noises coming from down there. She assured me that my father was in his bedroom getting dressed (I believe that he overslept without the alarm), and not down in the basement, so I got up, dressed, and went down to check.

The wood in the gasification boiler had continued to burn, even with the internal blower stopped, essentially superheating the water in the boiler well past boiling point (the system is normally under pressure, so even heating the water past normal boiling point often leaves it still as water). A steam valve was blowing at one location on the pipes, and another pressure release valve had poured water out on the floor in the boiler room. The banging noise was steam in the pipes.

My father came down to check while I was down there, and we also noted that there was water in the east room in the basement that wasn't coming from the boiler. It was still raining and freezing on, and some of the rain water was coming into the basement in that room.

When we got back upstairs, my brother R was there, having agreed to drive both of my parents to my father's follow-up dr's appointment that morning. My father made a quick call to someone about the boiler overheating, and received instructions for how to open one of the one-way valves to allow the system to work by convection rather than with the circulator pumps. The instructions were a bit confused by the time they got to me, though, and we couldn't figure out what valve was being talked about, where it was, or how to open it. I didn't figure that out until later.

I reassured everyone involved that I would take care of the chores (which my father had missed by oversleeping) and read the manual for the boiler to determine how the system was supposed to work during a power outage (which it is supposed to be able to do, using convection to circulate the hot water), call the man who knew about the check valves as a follow-up, etc.

R noticed that one of the pipes behind the wood stove, that leads to the radiator in the second floor kitchen, was hot. It turns out that this was part of the system's method of dissipating excess heat: Automatic valves "fail open" when there is no power, so that the water can continue to circulate by convection, as long as the one-way values [valves -- it's interesting how Latin studies can interfere with your typing] are also opened. That radiator was directly above the boiler, so most of the excess heat was going up to our kitchen, which already had a really good stove going in it. We had to open a couple of the windows in the kitchen, as well as the door to the back attic, to let the excess heat out. Imagine having to open windows because it's too hot when the outside temperature is at freezing.

They left for the appointment, I took care of the chores, kept the fires fed, dragged a couple of limbs off of the main road and the end of the main driveway (there's more than one driveway for the farm -- they had used a lower one), and set up a piece of corrugated roofing to direct water overflowing from an eavestrough away from the foundation of the house so that it would stop running into the basement.

[They had an interesting trip to the doctor's: The town was closed because of downed tree limbs everywhere, and the main road that R had planned to take was completely blocked, so they had to take a back road to get around the main road blockage. We all know various routes for cases like that.]

Water pressure kept up for most of the day, continuing to provide water for the chickens and a second first floor bathroom. Firewood was brought up from the basement to both stoves. Our breakfast was ration bars and tea, our lunch was backpacking food designed to be cooked using boiling water, heated on the gas stove in the back kitchen on the first floor. The heating system was reconfigured for convection operation, with the second floor loop closed (we have a really good stove), but no more wood was put into it, as the water temperature was still too high. I don't recall what we had for supper on Friday.

In the evening,

helwen worked on a quilt while I read to her, both by the light of an oil lamp. Interestingly enough, the book that I was reading from is part of the series by S.M. Stirling, where all electric power (and other types of power) has been stopped...

We retired for the evening at about 9:00 PM. It had been a long day.