FROZEN PIPES

Our water pipes froze last night. Not everywhere, thank goodness. The main line lies deep underground, and comes into our boiler room. From there the pipes go down and into the various parts of the house. For the kitchen sink, that means through the cellar, and it was there (underneath the windows to the right of the front door) that they froze. Which was a real pain, since it also took the dishwasher out of action.

Getting professional people out to look at such things is hideously expensive, particularly around Christmas time. Fortunately, however, my mother-in-law's neighbour has a useful electric hand tool, which acts as a sort of mini blowtorch. You point it at the frozen part of the pipe, and try to ensure that the water thaws before the plastic pipe melts. After half an hour or so of unsophisticated hair-drying, we were back to flowing water.

But with temperatures plummeting to minus 20 degrees these days, something else had to be done. So I went up to the local builder's merchant and bought a whole load of spongey pipes. You wrap these ingenious things around the water pipes and they keep them insulated. That should keep us going until the end of winter, whenever that is.

Walter Blotscher