Toadfish Monastery

Quote from: The Meromorph on January 27, 2009, 06:54:57 PM
There are some irregular English surnames that always delight me.

"It's spelled 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht, but it's pronounced 'Throatwobbler Mangrove'!"

Yeah, I remember those commercials.  They made Champlain look like a bit of a numpty.   

Actually, they put my mind at ease a bit, because the other rumour I had heard before that was that the name "Canada" had come from what the early Portugese explorers had written over this area on their maps: "aca nada"... or "nothing here".  I was happy to find out that story was apocryphal.

Aggie - you might like this: my grandmother had a bunch of letters written by one of my ancestors who lived in New Brunswick pre-confederation where he talked about taking a trip "up to Canada"... i.e. Quebec and Ontario.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 27, 2009, 08:33:41 AM
Okay, here in Oklahoma?

We have a plethora of Native American names that have been Anglicized, even our state is a Native American word (I've no idea what it means.... probabily the first white men that came to the area asked the locals what the area was called with sign language.)

According to Wikipedia, it means "red people" in Chocktaw.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 27, 2009, 08:33:41 AM
The city I live in, Tulsa is another Native American word, that may possibly mean:  "bend in the river, what are you blind?"  (actually I've no idea, but it sounds possible... )


It's pronounced pretty much as it's spelled:   Emphasis on first sylible, "Tul" and rhymes with "fall"

"sa" is pronounced with short "a" as in uh.

Thus Tulsa would rhyme with "fall-suh"

Funny... I pronounce it "tull-suh" - the first syllable would rhyme with "seagull".

I guess this is how you tell the locals apart from the tourists, right?  We have a similar trick here: if you pronounce the second "t" in "Toronto", it's like announcing to everyone "hey!  We're not from here!" 

Quote from: Agujjim on January 26, 2009, 02:22:21 PM
Does anyone else have these issues? 

Growing up, I lived on a street named "Mafeking", after the town in South Africa (now called Mafikeng, BTW) where there was a big siege during the Boer War.  I was in Boy Scouts and I knew the story of how Robert Baden-Powell led the defense of the town and in the process came up with the idea behind Scouting, so I knew how to pronounce it, but everyone I knew would pronounce it incorrectly:

The proper way: Mah-fuh-king.
Their way: Mayfe-king

It might've been a similar thing going on.

Patrician

Bob, I think great minds think alike - I just came inbto say that I fixed the problem and saw your post about the hair dryer. I found the cold water pipe in the basement ceiling as close as I could get to the riser and blasted it with a hair dryer for about ten minutes.  Thermal conductivity was my friend; that was all it took to get everything flowing again.

I'm glad it's working again. Thanks, all.

I'm annoyed with whoever designed my plumbing layout, though - the cold water pipe goes from the tee to the outside tap (i.e. a big thermal bridge) and then up a riser in the outside corner of the house most exposed to the wind (i.e. another thermal bridge). Arrrgh. I'm surprised this is the first time we've had it freeze.

I think I've figured out what's going on: it looks like the builders did put the water pipes to the upstairs bathroom on an outside wall.  The main floor walls didn't line up with the upstairs ones like I thought, so there isn't an interior wall passage to use for the riser.  However, there's a boxed-in protrusion in the kitchen, right on the corner of two outside walls that's immediately under the tub.  I'm fairly certain that's where they ran the pipes.

It's been crazy cold and windy here for the past few days, and that corner's the spot of the house that's most exposed to weather.

On a hunch, I cranked the thermostat way up yesterday evening, and by morning I was getting a dribble from the cold water tap at the tub.  Hopefully that's all it needs; if not, I'll probably end up hacking into the kitchen drywall to install an electric pipe heater.

In case that's not it, here are the answers to your questions:

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 16, 2009, 05:28:35 AM
Okay, we've clarified a few points.

A few more questions, I promise.

Is the sink freestanding, or is it a vanity/cabnent?  That is, is the sink mounted on a box or similar built-in, that encloses it's pipes, or is the sink open to the "winds" and mounted directly to the wall?

Is the sink on an outside wall, or on a wall immediately adjacent to an outside wall?   (i.e. 90 degrees from an outside wall)

[/quote]
It's mounted in a vanity on an outside wall.  The tub sits in the corner of two outside walls, though the tap for it is on an interior wall shared with the shower.  The toilet's at the opposite corner of the bathroom from the tub on two inside walls.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 16, 2009, 05:28:35 AMAs others have correctly asked, are there water pipes in the attic?

I'm fairly certain there aren't.  The attic's designed to be a cold (i.e. below-freezing) space.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 16, 2009, 05:28:35 AMAnd I just had another thought that might be the root-cause.

*all* modern plumbing since, what, the 60's at least, have vent pipes through the roof for the waste plumbing lines.   Many combine these various pipes into a single or a few runs, but older houses have separate runs for each and every drain in the house.

A vent pipe is basically a waste pipe, connected to the waste plumbing, and goes all the way up, through the roof, and is never capped--open to the elements.  (and cold air, unfortunately)

If, your sink has it's own vent stack, or if it's closely tied to the toilet's vent stack, the stack may pass up the wall next to the incoming water pipes-- not uncommon, and nothing wrong with that, either.  Well, mostly nothing.

If your vent stack is large diameter, and if it's the toilet's one it will be at least 4" in diameter (roughly 10 cm) .  This can allow quite a bit of cold air infiltration.  If the pipe is made of cast iron (many are) then it's even worse.  If the water supply pipes are in the same cavity as the vent stack, *and* if when the plumber installed these when the house was built, he likely removed or reduced any insulation in that cavity....I see this all the time, actually.  :grrr:  (too lazy to fix it right...)

In any case, the vent stack *could* be the source of the cold air, and what caused the pipes to freeze solid. 

Unfortunately, short of Superman's x-ray vision, I cannot think of any way to "see" the location of these without tearing out wallboard.   But, if your pipe's frozen, and burst?  You're going to have to do this anyway..... but wait!  Not yet! 

Hmmmm.....let me think.  One way to check on things, is to climb up on the roof, directly over your bathroom (I  know!  2 stories!  Yuck!) and look for a vent stack on the same wall that the sink is attached to.  If the stack is directly or just beside the sink, that *may* be the cause.

Good thought, but my vent stack is on the opposite side of the house.  We've got two bathrooms upstairs; the vent is next to the other one, which is fine.  The frozen-up bathroom is as far away as you can get from the vent stack and still be in the house.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 16, 2009, 05:28:35 AMIf your pipes were run between floors, then up the wall to the sink, then your clog is somewhere in the wall, or beneath the bathroom floor.  This is a very common way to run plumbing, unfortunately.

At this point, I think this is the most likely explanation.  There's a drywall box built into my kitchen wall that runs up the wall from floor to ceiling, then across to approximately where my bathroom sink is above.  I hadn't thought of that before because it looks kinda like an architectural feature: it looks like an extension of the drywall work above the kitchen cabinets.  In retrospect, though, it's quite possible that there's plumbing behind it.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 15, 2009, 04:40:26 PM
Well, that's certainly weird.

My first knee-jerk response is to assume that pipes have frozen in or near your bathroom. 

Is your house a slab or do you have a crawl space?

It's got a full basement, but the bathroom in question is on the second floor.  The kitchen is directly below, and everything's fine there.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 15, 2009, 04:40:26 PMIf the latter, your foundation vent near your bathroom may be open, allowing freezing air under that portion of your house, and this could account for all your symptoms.  Draining everything would not un-freeze things, either.  Only closing the vent, and letting the pipes thaw will.   (if, indeed freezing is the issue)

Hmm.  That makes me think: maybe the insulation's been disturbed in the attic and cold air has gotten into an interior wall.  That might explain what's going on.

I haven't noticed any unusually cold walls, but then, I don't usually go rubbing up against them as a matter of course.

A builder in Canada would know better than to put pipes in an outside wall, wouldn't he?

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 15, 2009, 04:40:26 PM
One symptom you can verify, is the floor in your bathroom unusually cold?  (i.e. colder than elsewhere in your house).   Try walking around the perimeter of your house, and look for tiny "windows" or openings to the crawlspace.  Covering these in the winter is a good idea, and a simple sheet of 1" thick styrofoam works wonders.   But any material that covers the hole should work.

There are no holes that lead to the space... at least no man-made holes, and I hope I would've noticed if bats had pried the siding away or something like that.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 15, 2009, 04:40:26 PM
Edit:  you said basement?   Hmmm....let me think about that...

No... the bathroom's on the second floor.  I just used the basement tap to try to drain the pipes.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 15, 2009, 04:40:26 PMIf you really think it's blockage?  (and not freezing) then short of replacement, reverse blowing of the pipes is your best bet. 

I really don't know.  Everything seems to be behaving like the pipe has frozen, but I just don't see any way how that would be physically possible.

I'll keep in mind what you said about blowing the pipes, but it might not be practical; it would probably take several hundred feet of hose to stretch from my next door neighbor's outside spigot to the upstairs bathroom.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on January 15, 2009, 04:40:26 PM
Basement?  You have a basement?   Is your basement full, or only partial?  Is your bathroom over the basement, or is it over somewhere else, like a solid slab?

The bathroom's on the second floor at one corner of the house.  It's immediately over top of the kitchen, which is over top of the rec room in the basement.

I know there are a few knowledgeable plumbers on here.  Hopefully someone can shed some light on my problem.

Last night, the cold water in my bathroom stopped working.  I went upstairs to get ready for bed, went to brush my teeth, and nothing.  Hot water works fine, but no cold water.  Same for the bathtub, shower and toilet, but everywhere else in the house is okay.

Possibly pertinent details:

- there's no flow at all... not even a little bit.  When I open the faucet, I don't hear anything; no gurgling, no flow, nothing.
- everywhere outside the one bathroom, everything works just fine: good flow on both hot and cold with no change from before.
- the house is about 10 years old, so all the pipe is copper in hopefully good shape; no galvanized or anything like that.
- it got really cold yesterday, though I don't think (or maybe "I hope" would be more accurate) that the pipe to the bathroom is in an outside wall.
- I didn't notice any water problems prior to this.  Yesterday morning, I had good flow on hot and cold, but yesterday afternoon, nothing on cold.
- the shower acted a bit funkier than the other fixtures.  At the sink and the bathtub, I have good flow on hot and nothing on cold.  At the shower, I now have low flow on hot and nothing on cold.
- I don't think it's leaking in the walls or anything like that.  There are no signs of water below the bathroom or anywhere I think the pipe might run, and with all the taps in the house shut, the water meter doesn't move.

I slept on the problem and came up with an idea this morning.  Assuming that it was a blockage that might be dislodged, I closed the shutoff on my water service at the meter and drained down the water level in the cold water pipes at the basement laundry tub.  Then, I opened up the bathtub faucet upstairs and opened the shutoff as quickly as I could, hoping that a bit of water hammer would work it loose - no effect.

So... it seems to me like it's some sort of blockage, but the question in my mind is what kind of blockage and what do I do about it?  Has anyone run into anything like this before?

Quote from: anthrobabe on January 06, 2009, 04:16:35 AMOHHHHH- my daughters boyfriend buys up one entire half of the board if he can and then builds death stars on them or whatever the hotel equiv is in Star Wars monopoly-- pest!

One of my friends likes to do that, and then he offers the other players an insurance policy: if you pay him an up-front fee for every go-around the board, then you don't have to pay rent when you land on his properties.

Technically, the rules don't allow you to do side transactions like that, but we like to get our own little market economy going.

Johnny Cash

I spent the Leap Second saying "one!"

Well, I think I found the effect of the oats: they increase the viscosity of the beer, which means that the bubbles of foam that are produced as the yeast creates CO₂ don't break.

On Saturday, I went down to the basement and found that a fair bit of the beer had... um... enthusiastically left the carboy.  From what I can gather, the foam built up on top of the beer, carrying the bits of hops and grains that were floating on top of it.  Some of these little bits clogged the airlock until the pressure built up and then went blooey as they dislodged, expelling about a litre of beer and munge, and blowing the top off the airlock.  I got to spend a good part of the afternoon cleaning the evidence off the walls and ceiling.

Everything's back together now and the foam's gone down; hopefully the beer didn't get infected while the airlock wasn't in place.

Update: New Beer's Day was a success.  The beer is now happily bubbling away in the cellar.

The vanilla bean (which I found at my neighbourhood grocery store, BTW - I thought it'd be harder to find) gets added when I transfer the beer to the secondary fermenter in a few days.  The almond extract will get added during bottling.

Potential alcohol was 10%, which means the finished product will probably end up being around 8%... I think.  This is my first beer recipe that uses oats, and I'm not sure what effect they have on the specific gravity.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on December 31, 2008, 12:40:21 AMThat's amazing, really.  I take it your French does not include common colloquial phrases or words?   

It does, but my French abilities are generally at the "I would like to buy some butter and some cheese" level.  I don't have a lot of practical experience speaking with actual Francophones, so I don't know the nuances of things like "finish" vs. "terminate" when it comes to how the words are used in everyday life.

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on December 31, 2008, 12:40:21 AMYou have me beat, hands-down, though.

My "foreign" language skills consist of various computer languages...

...plus English.  

Heh... I speak English, supposedly French, a very small amount of Spanish, and race marshal hand signals. 

Refrain:

What do you do with a drunken pirate?
What do you do with a drunken pirate?
What do you do with a drunken pirate
Ear-lye in the mornin'?

1.
Feed him more rum 'til he can't stand upright
Feed him more rum 'til he can't stand upright
Feed him more rum 'til he can't stand upright
Ear-lye in the mornin'

Refrain

2.
Take photos of 'im for blackmailin'
Take photos of 'im for blackmailin'
Take photos of 'im for blackmailin'
Ear-lye in the mornin'

Refrain

3.
Shake 'im upside-down for coins and jewelry
Shake 'im upside-down for coins and jewelry
Shake 'im upside-down for coins and jewelry
Ear-lye in the mornin'

Refrain

4.
Just say to 'im "Good mornin' Cap'n"
Just say to 'im "Good mornin' Cap'n"
Just say to 'im "Good mornin' Cap'n"
Ear-lye in the mornin'