when I bought my house one of the first things my dad told me I need to know is where to shut the water off..
I don't care if they fine me..
I have done a few basic plumbing jobs where I turned off the water.

Ha! My dad told me the same thing and asked me if I had the tool to do it.

I have a 2 turn off valves just outside my house , one for line running to the boathouse and one for the whole house. It has come in handy several times,
Both have round , faucet like handles. At my meter are two valves , one is the faucet type and one is the kind that needs the special tool ( or a big
pair of channel locks) Not sure why the redundancy there. Both are on my side of the meter.


MO

For us ghetto dwellers in the metroplex, shut it off or call 311. Leave the fire department alone. You can buy the wrench at Home Depot or Lowes.

The amount of people that were completely inept in taking care of themselves, their family, and their own property is absolutely astounding. I knew that a lot of people were dumb, but they really showed their colors this week. Jesus, it was 5 days.

Without electricity, my generator, or my fireplace, i still would have survived this week no problem.

There was a large uptick in carbon monoxide poisoning intakes at ER rooms because people were using generators inside, charcoal grills inside, cars inside the garage with the garage closed. These are commonly known ways to die.

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/02/16...s-carbon-monoxide-poisoning-hypothermia/

Think about our forebearers who migrated here. They lived in log cabins with doors that didn't even seal. I think we have become a bit wussified.

It's a wimmings thing until your water heater chokes with deposits after 2 years.

More than a little. When people are asking for prayers because their power has been off a few hours then you are extremely soft or unprepared as hell.

Yes, but many people this weeks used the FD to turn off their water

I just heard about you folks problems. I am praying for you all.

It's true, we have become too dependent on modern convenience.

A month ago our power went out for about six hours. That's not good when one doesn't have wood heat. Especially when it's -20 outside as it was here that week.
Homes here are made for that kind of cold so our water stayed on and we were able to stay warm by bundling up, but five days without would have caused some problems. We'd have been okay, we have relatives close by that heat with wood but our water system would have had issues.
I would have shut it off and drained everything but I would have had at least a few burst pipes when the heat came back on.

It got me to thinking. A generator is one alternative but a simpler fix would be a free air gas space heater. They run without power and although they wouldn't keep the house warm it would keep it above freezing. A drip type diesel heater would do the same.
We had thought of putting in a wood heater but I don't know how much longer I'll be physically able to supply it with wood.

Because we live in a cold climate our water supply is set up for the cold temperatures, feed lines run 8 feet under ground, supply lines are under the floor, not in walls. So that shouldn't be a problem. We have kerosene lamps for light so heat is the only big problem.

I can't even imagine trying to cope if our house was built for the Texas climate.

Our supply lines are under the slabs on houses with slabs. It is the risers that cause the problems especially on upper floors in multi story houses. Avoiding risers on outside walls helps but hard to do for outside faucets. How do you get water to fixtures? Brief power outages generally do not cause problems.

Our outside faucets are specially made for freezing conditions.





They have the valve seat and the supply line and shutoff valve inside the house.

I expect it's too late to make a difference now but something that might have helped,

Flowing water will not freeze depending on flow rate and temperature. In other words, at 30 degrees only a slow flow is needed to prevent freezing..
At -10 a garden hose will not freeze at full flow but will freeze at half flow.

However, if the flow is stopped ice will begin to form immediately. So at 25f a tap left on enough to fill a coffee cup in two minutes will not freeze so long as it's left on.
One other thing to remember, if you can't leave a tap on in freezing temperatures then drain it. To do this, shot off the main supply line, then open the highest tap in the system and the lowest tap in the system. Once the bottom tap has drained open any other taps. This should prevent most pipes in the system from freezing and bursting.
Of course the main supply may still freeze but at least the damage will be minimal..