NO FREEZE WORRIES

 We had our first freeze of the season about a month ago (see below) and then...

A couple of weeks after that, we had a record snowfall.

This is a satellite photo of actual snow on the ground after the snowfall.  As they said, this is something we might never see again in our lifetime here in the South (or heck, it could happen again next year, ha). Still, it's a cool picture for sure.

As usual, they were reminding people to prepare for freezing temps and protect people, pets, pipes, plants.

There have been many posts from us over the years about our freezes, going back and forth to leave water running, turning on and off heaters, covering plants, crawling under the house to wrap pipes...

...worrying from afar in the city while obsessively checking the temps at the farm with our weather apps and then dealing with, unfortunately, a few burst pipes (above from a couple years ago) and plants and trees that did not make it.

That's when we realized, we won't have to do ANY of that this year and perhaps ever again.

No crawling under the house to wrap pipes, no driving out at lunch before the cold front hits to start dripping water, no worrying during the week while we're in town and wondering what we'll find when we drive out.

We took steps to make sure the new house is also as Winter protected as it can be for NEXT year and onward, when we are living out there.

The new house will be on a slab, so no elevation to have to worry about cold air underneath and no crawling underneath the house.  It's also thicker than normal.

Also, all pipes in the house will be PEX.  Much safer in freezing weather than regular PVC.

Being a Texas builder, the company also builds them to be as resistant as possible to freezing temps. That being said, they keep the majority of the pipes on inside walls and not in the attic.  We're moving our water heater to the garage so it's not up there and that means no water pipes moving through the attic space.  We are also having any pipes in outside walls to be double insulated.  They also use spray foam throughout that has one of the highest R factor ratings (keep the heat out in the Summer and the cold out in the Winter).

Here is another thing we changed: we asked them to install special hose bibs on the outside that are freeze proof.  They are from a company called Aquor.  It's like having a water hydrant on your house.  You attach a special connector to the end of your hose and then when you need to connect, you just flip it up and twist it in or out.  When nothing is connected, the water stays inside of your house with nothing on the outside.  They market them as "freeze proof", so we shall see.  We figured it was one more extra layer of freeze protection that we could do.

For the plants, well, we'll be there to cover them as needed and of course there will be heated spaces we can bring them into.  We'll also have a garage and a barn where we can plug in a small heater as needed.  But we're working on other plans for them as well...*greenhouse*. 😉

Of course, the biggest difference is that the house will have heat!  We haven't had that at the farm in quite a while.  "J" from 2nd Family has a new home (as of a few years ago) and she's got full central heat and has never had an issue in any of these recent freezes, so that's a good sign.

That being said, we are going to figure out a backup plan for those extended power outages (winter freeze or summer storm).  We are thinking ahead to that potentiality in the future by having a transfer switch installed for a whole house generator.  Not sure what type of generator we'll get, but we're researching that.

But for THIS Winter anyway...zero worries.  It's kind of refreshing for a change, ha.