TX owners.....

[WildHorse]

Might want to rethink that and at least cover the ones you care about.

Native plants in Canada & USA will survive multiple long stretches of below freezing temps. It ain't there first rodeo.

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[volcanogod]

Here in South Austin, we lost Spectrum internet last Sunday.... Ok, not that big of a deal... Should have been a precursor to run to the South. The storm hit us and by midafternoon we lost all power.... Ok well I prepped a bit for this too with UPS's and multiple backup power solutions or jumpstart LIPO packs. We had a fire place with natural gas and a gas stove. Ok. I can deal with this I think, bear in mind we have 12 year old triplets and they suck power like I drink beer. We put 3 pans on the stove boiling water for 40 hour straight along with constant fires in our fireplace with only smoker wood for our smoker. Towards the end I had broken out my old college text books to serve as wood.

We managed to keep the temps inside the house around 50 – 60F with our efforts while fighting CO poisoning. We went for drives everyday mainly to clear our minds from the CO poisoning from the previous night effort to not freeze as well as allow recharging our many batteries. Our Honda Odyssey was our daytime lifeboat. Around lunch time we get a boil water warning which showed up about 30 minutes after our water was no more..... Ok glass is still half full while I'm hating Austin even more we have power and natural gas, but no water now. Fast forward to 12:20AM last night the power came on for the 1st time since this all began Sunday/Monday. All our UPS's and crap all powered up and woke only me up. I jumped out of bed and stupidly starting to turn them back on to try and get internet back up and silence the alarms. About the time I pulled up my 1st web page the power shut off again. WTF!!! I jumped up again to go turn off all the beeping UPS's and said the hell to it and crawled back into a now ice cold yet again. About the time I got comfortable the power goes back on... OH yeah.... NO, screw it I'm staying in bed!

As of today we still have power but still no water. No indication from our elite leaders in Austin when they would have it fixed or any kind of a plan or timeline. Nothing but double talk and trying to explain how they let the primary water station for all of the city run out of diesel fuel for the generators and that was OK. Only a few more years of this crap before I’m out of here and retire!!!

Key learnings from Living in Austin:

Austin Water is managed by idiots as is much of Austin! I would strongly recommend anyone with questionable water check out Berkey water filter solutions. We bought our 1st after the Austin water idiots decided it would be great to use a chemical to kill zebra mussels from the water intakes on the main water plant back a few years ago. This resulted in over a week or 2 of boil water that smell like rotten fish ass. I ordered our Berkey as soon as they announced it overnight from Amazon. Best money we ever spent and we use it daily for all drinking water for everything. The kids love it. No need for bleach or any chemicals or boiling anything. https://www.berkeywater.com/berkey-systems/

 

[Lurker_350]

I feel your pain. Seems like San Antonio has generally stable power right now, but water will continue to be an issue.

I spent some time away from our house on Tuesday night since a friend had some power while we didn't and came home to find that dripping all the faucets wasn't enough. Pipe froze and got quite a bit of water inside. Ended up having to strip the siding and cut a hole in the exterior sheathing to access the line. It was a hose bib line that ran up from the slab in an exterior wall - behind the kitchen cabinets.

Very glad that I purchased a used 2017 F-150 with onboard power in April. I was able to run my corded tools and charge battery powered tools to get the work done. I've seen similar stories of folks using the 2021 F150s to power many of their appliances in their houses. Also glad that I'm a semi-hoarder and had the necessary copper lines, fittings, and soldering equipment to get the fix done before the snow started again.

I guess next time I will turn off the water, drain the lines as well as I can, and leave all the faucets open. Thinking about adding a drain valve at the piping low point to help get as much out as possible. This way, even if a line bursts, it won't flow for a long period of time before we find it.

Let's help others where we can and stay safe!

 

[SmokinAces]

Pipe froze and got quite a bit of water inside

Lurker, can’t imagine anything worst at a time like this. So glad you were able to secure the damage and make a repair. Everything was working against you. Awesome job man!!

 

[460Fred]

Native plants in Canada & USA will survive multiple long stretches of below freezing temps. It ain't there first rodeo.

Surviving vs thriving are vastly different expectations.
I‘ll agree to disagree.
Covering plants with many a day not getting above freezing is futile. Not many saw this coming.

 

[WildHorse]

Surviving vs thriving are vastly different expectations.

My non native to here cactuses (for example) survive the long cold (like -30 cold) for the 4 or so months of winter outside no problem. They flower in the spring and repeat. Like I said, ain't there first rodeo.

 

[honeybadger]

Regarding pipes and heat, last summer we spray-foamed our attic. Made a pretty big difference in the summer to lower HVAC costs (30% or so), but holy hell. It's been a HUGE difference this winter. Heat only runs a couple of times a day and even during the worst of the blackouts, our house maintained 63-68* even when the heat only got to run for 10-15 mins at a time (gas furnace). No pipes frozen either.

Now if only my windows were that efficient.

 

[NDALLAS40]

Our state isn't handling the situation worth a crap. The preparedness and the response has been absolutely horrendous. Maybe some of the thousands of people migrating here will sit up and take notice. IMHO, Texas life is HIGHLY overrated. Yes, I'm a native and current resident.

 

[SmokinAces]

Texas life is HIGHLY overrated.

from someone who’s lived in a few other major cities. Will say I enjoy what’s offered here and how it’s offered. None of the cities Ive lived in were without major issues. Change needs to happen over this event, hopefully folks make some noise. All we can do is try to make it better. I like it here.

 

[tex929rr]

Our state isn't handling the situation worth a crap. The preparedness and the response has been absolutely horrendous. Maybe some of the thousands of people migrating here will sit up and take notice. IMHO, Texas life is HIGHLY overrated. Yes, I'm a native and current resident.

10 days before the cold weather started we were already warning people in our service area to drip faucets, insulate plumbing, and have a week’s worth of food on hand at a minimum. Yet two days into the weather event we were hauling water and food to people. Since we are rural people are frankly a lot better prepared than people on a city water system, but we still had lots of problems. The electrical grid issues will hopefully get solved but the truth is that this really was a 100 year event, at least in South Texas. IMHO the biggest problem is we won’t know if the ERCOT changes that are bound to happen will be really effective or just more window dressing. Upgrading the grid costs money and people will already be angry when their next power bill arrives.

 

[JR369]

I'd say where I am in North TX, I was lightly to moderately impacted by this event. Rolling power outages is all. The main assets impacted were the heaters, freezer, fridge, and lighting during blackout time. The freezer and fridge weren't really in any jeopardy of anything spoiling. The water and natural gas never stopped flowing but we did have a boil water order for a few days. So we boiled a couple large pots of water to draw from, used the fireplace and candles during the down time. Certainly a learning experience for identifying deficiencies. My plan going forward is a to wire in a transfer panel and get a portable propane/gasoline generator to keep the essential circuits going.

 

[Scoobs]

.... My plan going forward is a to wire in a transfer panel and get a portable propane/gasoline generator to keep the essential circuits going.

making your next truck a Ford 150 with the built in generator might be a good option. Definitely portable.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/bu...h-storm-help-their-ford-pickup-tesla-n1258364

 

[UnhandledException]

“Texas Winter”. This is 6 or 7 days of cold, maybe some ice and snow. The weatherman will threaten snow. It may snow, it may not and if the weatherman says 2 inches it could be 10 or it could be 1/2”. It doesn’t matter how much snow it is, we’ll all freak out because we don’t see snow often.

The threat of snow (or ice) from the weatherman is your prompt to head to the grocery store and buy milk, eggs and bread. It doesn’t matter if you need these items. It’s just what we do. Everyone in town will be there.

You’ll also need to make a mad dash for faucet covers and finding them and getting out of the store will be like an episode of the hunger games. You’re in the redneck district.

Don’t look for a sled. You won’t find one. In the rare chance we get enough ice or snow to sled grab some cardboard or a trash can lid and go find the nearest hill. Yes, we know it’s not a hill. You live in the flatland, just go with it. You’ll be alarmed by the fact that you’re “sledding” towards a bar ditch, fence or maybe into a farm to market road. Just go with it. You’ll be fine.

We don’t have equipment to handle the winter and weather. The roads will be a mess and even though the state has been telling you for a week they’re ready, they’re not and it won’t work. Just stay home if you can and if you can’t just come to terms with the fact that nobody here knows how to drive in snow and ice.

Whatever you do, DO NOT talk about snow tires.

If you happen to slide off the road or get stuck, turn your flashers on, take a deep breath and wait. Two guys in a four wheel drive truck will be along in no time to offer assistance. Don’t try to help them, they live for this stuff, and will do what they can to get you back on the road. If either one of them screams “hey y’all watch this” just get back and get your phone out and start recording, you’ll probably have a viral video. Also of note, when they offer you beer and deer sticks, don’t be rude, take them and smile.

No matter what you do, don’t talk about how they did it back home in any of these scenarios. Nobody cares. You live in Texas now, Texans know they live in the greatest state in the country and it’s our way or the highway.

When we act like we’re going to die and start to complain about the 7 days of winter just shut up, we’re serious and we don’t care how much you love it. We don’t.

You’ll be back in shorts and flip flops in a week to ten days and it’ll be nice until right around Easter.

Texas “second winter” will be 2 or 3 days and will hit right around Easter, usually the week before or the week after. This will hit right around the time you plant flowers and a garden. We know you’re not from around here when we see you’ve planted flowers before Easter and before the “second winter” has hit.

This is why all the people at the nursery don’t sound like us when you’re shopping for plants. We know better.

During second winter it’ll go from 70 to 25 and you’ll experience all four seasons in one day. This too shall pass, get used to it and when second winter is over you can enjoy the 3-4 weeks of “spring” before summer gets here and it’ll be melt your face off hot until sometime around Halloween.

God bless Texas!

This is funny.

We got literally close to 3 feet of snow in aggregate in the last 30 days in northeast. We have had consistently 15F degree days for 2 weeks at a stretch during the day and at night probably last month and a half has been that way. I dont understand why the pipes are freezing in Texas and there is a state of emergency. Is it simply because the water pipes have not been buried underground?

My house was built in 1950s and our water pipe is 10’ below grade. We have never had burst pipes here. We lose power all the time but its nothing a $900 generator and a $50 generator interlock switch wont fix. My 10kw portable generator runs the entire house (even AC).

Also even those frigid temps and 3 ft of snow doesnt stop me from driving my GT350 with snow tires. It doesnt matter if its ice out or if its blizzard. This car doesnt care. Clutch pedal, snow tires, and some common sense is all you need.

I am not trying to be insensitive, just trying to understand how in this day and age in year 2021 in USA, we cant seem to handle freezing temperatures.

And mind you I in the northeast probably dont know cold like those folks in proper central North or better in northern europe or Russia. Now thats proper cold.

 

[Bullitt 2159]

We woke up to 2 feet of new snow yesterday south of Buffalo when 2 inches was predicted the night before. Everyone had it cleaned up by noon and went about a normal day.
About the electricity, buy a portable generator now. We never needed one for about the first 45 years I lived here, then there was a 3.5 day outage and everyone bought a generator, that was about 15 years ago and I think I've used mine every year since. The state is not going to ensure that you have power. Now they know that we'll get by and when the power goes out it's often for over 12 hours. It was never like that in the old days. It's not going to get any better.

 

[hlfbkd420]

I am not trying to be insensitive, just trying to understand how in this day and age in year 2021 in USA, we cant seem to handle freezing temperatures.

It's not the northeast we are talking about. It's Texas. They aren't used to temperatures like this.
And their grid is open source. If it snowed two feet in Phoenix tomorrow, we'd be ****** too.

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