Staying safe in extreme weather

On a Saturday night in January 1979, after being on my own since just September, the outdoor air temperature plummeted well below 0° F with howling winds. I slept fitfully, knowing “all you know what” was likely to break loose.

The first call came in at 4 a.m. — rise and shine and meet the challenge of the new day as my father had been fond of shouting upstairs to roust my brothers and me. A panicked homeowner was on the phone exclaiming her front room radiator had just exploded! She wasn’t wrong, as its end section was missing a rather large portion that blew straight across the room, through the wall, and damaged her sewing machine cabinet! Black hydronic water exhibited the explosive nature of the event. Ice inside the tubular cast iron radiator gleamed back at me under the probing beam of my flashlight. Her heat was still on with just this front room radiator affected. Working with some urgency, I broke the union ends at the radiator valve and return bend, removed both with my trusty RIDGID pipe wrenches and capped off both the supply and return. Fingers crossed that the two frozen lines were not cracked or split from freezing, and with dozens of calls now screaming for attention, the long day’s emergency calls demanded I move on.

Why is it always on a weekend? In January of 1976, I took my date to a remote cabin in the woods for a romantic dinner. The snow was too deep to drive into the cabin, so we parked my 1969 Cougar near the gated entrance and walked the half-mile to the cabin. It was cold outside, but we were too smitten to care and, besides which, with a roaring fire in the otherwise unheated cabin, we would be more than comfortable. Hours later, we were shocked by how bitter cold the weather had turned. By the time we made it back to the car, my fingers had no sensation, and it took some fumbling to finally get the ignition key, unlock the doors, and start the car. The wind chill had dropped off to -50° F, and as I would come to find out, stayed in that range for most of the next three weeks.

I was a new journeyman, having recently passed that exam, and the first call Monday morning had my boss dropping me off with a sledgehammer to break up a customer’s sidewalk to access the three-foot-deep copper water service that my boss had turned off late Sunday night after it froze and split. It was on the shady side of the street and the standard burial depth was three feet, as frost rarely ever exceeded 30 inches depth in our region. I welcomed the physical exercise, as I was not dressed for below-zero air temperatures. The first blow with the 18-lb sledgehammer had an odd sound to it — the concrete didn’t crack, break or even show so much as a blemish. Subsequent blows had little effect, and after about 30 minutes of extreme pounding, all I had to show for my effort was a small depression with powdery concrete dust.

My boss returned a few minutes later and demanded to know what the heck I’d been doing. I tried explaining that the ground beneath the concrete had to be frozen solid and that the concrete wasn’t breaking due to the rock-solid earth. It was obvious, from the look on his face, that he wasn’t buying the explanation. “Here, you give it a shot,” and so he did — just once. He’d picked a new spot and the same tuning-fork-like noise I’d heard rang out as the sledgehammer’s metal business end bounced skyward. We went in search of a tow-behind compressor, which I would become quite intimately familiar with during the next three weeks of well-below-zero weather. Frost extended more than five feet below grade during that bitter cold snap.

In this business, expect the unexpected: Boom! The 1/2-inch copper cap grazed my ear as a deafening roar announced its rocket-like ejection from inside a bathroom sink cabinet. Scalding steam followed its trajectory. Stunned, it took a second or two to collect my wits and think about what had just happened and why a copper cap had darn near embedded itself in my forehead.

Anyone who’s been in this business for more than a few years can relate to stories where they were exposed to unhealthy and unsafe working conditions. From sweltering attics while working on HVAC equipment to full windswept subzero exposure outdoors to working partially submerged in sewage and doing so without hesitation in order to better serve their customers.

I had opened the basement-level washing machine boiler drains and the lines serving this new addition had been turned off — the system should have drained itself and no build-up of pressure should have existed. A few minutes’ investigation revealed the hot and cold lines running to the new bathroom had frozen shut while contractors were installing one of those pre-formed concrete basement stairways. Their plastic weather- and dust-shield enclosure inside the basement, unfortunately, encapsulated a few feet of our water lines within the exposed-to-outdoor freezing air temps. The ice plugs effectively blocked gravity drainage and the copper cap I had heated to remove was connected to a stub that held water — water that had been superheated well above 212° F! Superheated water expands 1,700 times in volume as it flashes over to steam. A small hole drilled in the second copper cap prevented another explosive event.

Some goods to keep you warm:

I always kept a pair of hip waders on my service truck for those unexpected sewage floods in basements, or when working in ditches inundated with sewage from ruptured septic tanks when connecting homes to municipal sewer systems.

As for those sweltering attics? Some nice-to-have accessories to keep you cool(er):