I see a pattern here....

It's Sunday and I spent another one doing jobs around the house. This time, I am trying to be proactive rather than reactive. I bought and installed heat tape on the cold water line to the kitchen sink, which, as I learned sits directly against the back foundation of the house.

Here we go....I had a bit of a quandry when I started this project. The water pipe feeding the cold water in the kitchen sink had an obvious single pipe ending point. But about 3' from the sink, it broke off into two different pipes. One pipe went straight back, had a shut off valve on it and then went directly into the ground. The other pipe veered off to the right and went through another foundation wall into the crawl space proper. I didn't know which one to put the tape on, so I opted for the one that had the greatest distance above ground. So I went to the right. This you can see in the insulation tape photo. In any event, I put the heat tape around the pipe and then wrapped pipe and tape with 1/2" insulation. For those who are interested, the pipe to the far right in the foam wrap is the hot water delivery. I don't have quite the same issues with the hot water as the cold water.


I had a little insulation left over, so I decided to try to insulate the crawl space "door" as best I could.
And because I am a real girl, with real breasts, I could only reach in about 4' into the space. So despite the fact that I could fit both my shoulders through that opening, my breasts were far too great an obstacle to overcome, and that is why the tail of the heat tape is dangling. Oh, I suppose if I ever get my hands on one of those long-handled grippers that old people use to get into the top cabinets, I can actually fix this the right way. For now, I'm not happy about the dangle--especially the idea that is is reaching the ground--but electrical tape will not stick to stone and we must learn to live within our physical limitations.

I'm just glad no one besides Jake was there to witness the debacle of me backing out of that crawl space.

And what did I get for all my work? The satisfaction of spending my afternoon doing a project that no one can see. Oh well, think of the expense of burst water pipes that I am averting.