Overture

When I first shopped for a house in Austin, I was shocked to find old pier and beam sitting on cedar stumps. Back in California, these houses would have been nudged off their foundations by many of the more gentle tremors. There is so little topsoil here that, much of the time, you can expose the limestone using a scraping motion with the side of your boot. Just balance the foundation on the cedar stumps you cleared. Leave enough room to run the plumbing. If it's 1950, you will put in galvanized pipe, it will seem like a very good idea. If it's the 60s, run one inch soft copper from the curb and all copper supply under the house, hanging from the joists, which are decorated with black scorch marks. If its the 80s, everything is PVC, fuck it. No torch, no heavy cutting and threading, just prime and paint and it goes pretty quick. Outside of town, go ahead and use PVC for supply out to the main. Hell, make the main out of PVC. It would never freeze underground. It probably won't freeze under the house. We just get those warnings every winter about “cover your hose bib”. The breeze does get under there, but those pipes are nestled up to the uninsulated, warm floors. We insulate the attic here because the enemy is heat. If you ever get around to doing something as un-texan as insulating your floors, go ahead and update your plumbing and start wearing sandals.

The space between your dangling plumbing and the dirt must not be sealed off, you want ventilation under there. The hill country is a moldy place, and sealing up your crawlspace is a good way to start mushroom farming. You could leave it open, but some folks think that looks indecent so you nail up a little facia to block the view and keep it from looking like a trailer. This will not turn back racoons, possums, armadillos, foxes, skunks who find the sort of civilization you provide to take the edge off being a totally wild animal. Once your barrier is compromised, it becomes a better, darker shelter than it would have been if you had just left the space open. A diverse and resilient ecosystem now exists under your house, frequented by domestic and wild animals alike. It is a kind of commons for life in the area, providing a layer of interface between civilization and wilderness you never consciously consider, but which you can smell. You get used to the smell though, it's just the smell of the place, and it's not very strong because the breeze goes through, grazing pipe fittings like the testes of a short kilted scotsman.

That house is perfectly appropriate for Austin living in 1990. There is the occasional cold snap, but most houses will be fine until February 2021, when the temperature drops below 10F and stays there. The galvanized pipe in the old houses bursts in tiny pinholes, shooting out like sprinklers under the house. It will be the death knell for these ½” pipes. Of all the plumbing innovations through the years, these are the most notorious for corrosion and breakage, and before that, for lining themselves in filth like arthero sclerotic arteries. They rot from the inside out, so when you realize you must remove one, there is often only a spaghetti sized passage through the gunk. You will pay for an entirely new plumbing system. Copper will stretch a little, the bend of a 90 degree elbow will bulge from ice expanding along its length. If it were only one bad night, with the power cut out, this would be enough, but it stays cold, and just to make sure, they will turn the water off so you can’t drip the faucets. Once this happens, it's a done deal. It stays off for days. There will be no radiant heat spilling down through your uninsulated floor as the people topside spend their time in The Warm Room under blankets with camping equipment. The bulges erupt in little gashes. They look like mouths in mid sentence. No one knows about them yet. It's later, days later, when the weather warms up to the 40s and water is turned back on, a moment of celebration, when the new disaster occurs. This disaster is not the city’s problem at all. They got the mains up and running and that was not easy. What is happening to you is a waterpark in your crawlspace. You will hear the hissing rush of water ringing through all the pipes and you will see it where it finds its way out of your walls and suddenly, you will be very interested to understand how to work the city shutoff valve by the curb. The one that says Property of The City of Austin, which you are legally prohibited from operating. Find something you can fit into the little comma shaped hole in the heavy iron lid to pry it up and heave it out of the way. There is a strange little space in there, with disoriented looking insects. You may have to dig out some dirt with your hands before you find a bronze lozenge shaped knob. It's cold, there is still snow around the curb, your hands are wet and numb. You can’t turn that little thing, it's meant for some obscure tool carried around on utility trucks. A monkey wrench would work but the space is too small to allow the handle. You make do with the big channel grips. Or run around begging for help. Or sit and cry. Or maybe you just focus on your breathing.

if this were a mouth, what would it say?


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Next time, on Cold Water: “Before, we only went to the grocery store when necessary and always wore masks, now there was no grocery store. School was canceled, even over zoom. All our remaining connections with the world, as well as our daily routines, were wiped from the dry erase board and replaced with disaster chores like “fill bathtub” and “wrap pipes with blankets”.”


This essay series is part of a project to document Texan’s experiences during the 2021 freeze. Do you have a story to share about the 2021 Texas freeze? Share it with my publication, Freeze Stories, on Medium. If its not filled with filth, I’ll publish it. Ok, I’ll publish it even if its filled with filth.

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