My CPAP does not seem to work without power

[bill_schubert]

Most of the houses in this area heat and cool with a heat pump.  We have gas, fortunately, but that does not save us from the heat pump problems.  This county can have months of 100 degree + weather and no power outages but get the temp down to 4 like last night and we have rolling blackouts.  Heat pumps are inefficient in the extreme at the heat part of the equation especially when the condenser is covered in ice.

Last night they shut off power three times which, since both my wife and I sleep with CPAP devices, means we didn't sleep much and when we did it was really restless.  And today I feel like I've got a cold sore throat caused by trying to get air when I did sleep.  It will go away in a day or so and hopefully we will keep power through the night.  

And our pipes in the bathroom with external walls froze.  

The heat is back on and I jacked it up to 67 hoping we can get enough heat to the bathroom to keep the pipes from getting worse.  

And I'm supposed to work today.  Not motivated to help other people but probably what I need to do.  

But we've got food (Dinnerly cancelled for the week, though) and we're both fine and healthy and online as long as they stop killing the juice.  And we have a second bathroom with hot water and a shower so I see that in my future.

Comments

[mairi-dubh.livejournal.com]

You did open the faucet/s to a trickle in the bathroom with the pipes against the external wall, right? It won't stop water in the pipes from freezing but at least in theory it keeps the pipes from bursting (if they do rupture, your next option is to shut off the main water valve to your home.) Open the kitchen tap so the water (hot and cold) trickles, too.

If the sink and/or the bathtub is also against that exterior wall of the bathroom, and if there's a cabinet concealing the pipes, open up the cabinet door/s so the warm air you do have can get at them.

But you've lived in cold winter places before now, so you know all this stuff.

Do they still make those cable-type heaters which wrap around the pipes---which of course are only useful if you have electricity, since that's how they make warmth ?

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they are open now. I was actually surprised that they froze. Weird. All the interior stuff is good. It will come back and the pipes are that high tensile plastic that they use in new construction and is only a couple of years old so I suspect it will be fine.

This is all the winter we'll have for another five years so I'm not going all Maine on the house. Of course, if we do this again next year I'll start rethinking that opinion.

[mairi-dubh.livejournal.com]

Oooh.... Wanna know about this high tensile plastic used in new construction. I have a--- I'm drawn to old houses, like 1880s houses (although this one is mid-1920s) and I'm kinda big on "this is how it was built, this is how it should stay only in good repair," so I also tend not to be up on the latest technological advances.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that all will be fine: someone started to caution me about basements which around here tend to be damp, 'way back when, and I said swiftly that I was aware that no matter how you pretty it up a basement is just a hole in the ground, that water seeks its own (gravitational) level, that if there's a way for a single water molecule to get in, it will and where one gets in others follow until water has easy access to wherever and whatever; that nothing man-made is permanent, and that any house will be out of square and out of plumb before it's completed, and that's just the way things go.
That was that discussion, but I stand by my statements regarding things man-made.
And this one: Ma Nature always has the upper hand, always holds the high cards, and always, always always has an ace up her sleeve.

[sleepybadger.livejournal.com]

Hope it gets better soon, I know a lot of folks dealing with frozen pipes right now. Our only bathroom has external walls, so when it gets this cold we drip water to hopefully keep the pipes from cracking if they freeze. It's always a worry. Stay as warm as possible!