winter sliding spree. They were about to carry the truck over the banking into the woods at the edge of the driveway, when they had second thoughts and stopped just short of it, stuck in the snow. We would have offered the driver a bed for the night, but he called cheerfully, “I have plenty of tricks up my sleeve,” and was soon on his way.
Later, I went downcellar for something and discovered that the sump pump was running. The sump pump almost never ran. Dick and I rushed out into the storm – which was no longer snow, but pelting, freezing rain – to make sure that the 20-foot hose attached to the pump’s outside connector was, in fact, carrying water away from the house.
But, in fact, it wasn’t. Water trapped inside had frozen into a pernicious, tubular ice cork.
So there we were, in the soaking rain, carrying steaming hot water from the house, trying to thaw the hose by pouring hot water into it and on it, which meant numerous trips into and out of the house through several inches of wet snow on top of ice, and many opportunities to fall and feel like an idiot and thank your lucky stars you weren’t carrying boiling water when you fell.
And we were making no headway.
Then Dick, bless his engineering heart, remembered a length of hose coiled in the garage and wondered if it might be a worthy substitute for the frozen one. As soon as he detached the frozen hose from the connector, all that pent-up water (which we thought wasn’t flowing) barreled forth and doused him from the waist down. But never mind, we were making progress.
I rushed to the cellar, turned the sump pump off, rushed back outside to hold the flashlight while Dick attached the new hose, rushed back to the cellar to turn the sump pump on. And we were in business, except that the substitute hose was just a tad too wide and allowed a vigorous stream of water to jet toward the house at the connection, which would eventually have been a Bad Thing.
In case you ever need to know this: The bathtub is a perfect place to thaw frozen sump-pump hoses. I draped the hose over my shoulders and around my arms, hauled it into the house, wrestled it into the tub and ran the hot water into and around it. In a few minutes, slush blooped out. Dick hauled it outside while I hurried back downcellar. I turned the pump off, scurried outside to hold the flashlight while Dick changed the hose yet again, hurried back to turn the pump on.
I wished the UPS man had gotten stuck overnight. We could have used the help.
The good news: All was well, sump-pump-wise. Bad news: The sump pump is only the back-up, in case the external drainage system fails. The out-flow ends of that drainage system were totally iced over in the banking where they’re supposed to dump the unwanted water. We couldn’t even find them.
The next morning, a couple of men from our local energy company arrived. They planned to blast heated water onto the banking, in hopes of locating and thawing the pipe ends. But we had to wait. Their hose was frozen.
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