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Comment by hotsauceror | Hacker News Reader

We had an incident early this AM and of the eight people we paged, only one had power. I’ve been without power, heat, internet, water, or septic more than 90 minutes at a time for two days. My house was 44 degrees this morning when I woke up. Sunday night we were without power or heat for seven and a half hours. Our DR plan didn’t really account for all of our staff being on the same power grid!

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I’m in Austin, without power for almost 48 hours now. There’s ice in my roommate’s bedroom. It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I’m hearing that we won’t have power until Thursday at the earliest. I’ve gone beyond furious to just horribly depressed.

Good luck, and here's some advice from a midwesterner that has dealt with cold, ice, and snow forever. If it's cold enough to start freezing things inside then make sure you have some water flowing in your pipes. Keep your kitchen sink running on a low (very tiny) dribble. Maybe even keep a shower/bathrub running at a very low rate too. You do NOT want to be dealing with frozen, broken flooding pipes on top of no power. Can find more tips here: https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergen... Good luck (and happy birthday)!

Also, leaving water trickling when you’re on a septic system can ruin your grinder pump because it stirs up the solids in the first separating tank. And, as I learned the hard way this week, even if all the faucets are dripping, there’s no way to trickle a toilet. The supply lines for both of our toilets froze while the sink next to them kept right in dripping. And then there’s the question of how to keep your water heater from bursting when the power goes out and it can’t heat anything.

> there’s no way to trickle a toilet

If you have a tank toilet you might be able to adjust the floater (bend the rod upwards) so it never quite turns off the supply valve. Failing that, you can just manually prop the flap open with something.

If you have a flushometer, remove the nut over the valve and adjust the screw underneath until the valve never quite shuts off.

Warning: Take careful note of exactly how things were before. A toilet that never stops running can be just as hard on the spirit as a toilet that doesn't work at all.

I guess that’s true. But the alarm on our septic starts screaming after about six hours of a trickling toilet. The alarm is pretty much there for that specific condition and the installer really hammered on the need to fix a leaking toilet Immediately. I guess in the grand scheme of things a new grinder pump and a visit from the honey wagon are cheaper than a condemned house, though...

For a couple of cents, couldn't the grinder circuit include a basic 555 timer de-bounce circuit to suppress multiple triggers within, say, 30 minutes? That seems a lot cheaper than an alarm.

Alternatively, why doesn't the grinder have a higher minimum triggering flow rate? It seems it's falsely detecting potential solids arrival.

Otherwise there are folks who would let the toilet run for a year without fixing it.

Doesn't that simply means water and sewage treatment are also too cheap?

No, it just means people act human.

It’s not that it “stirs up solids,” it’s that a continuous leak causes the pump to cycle on more frequently. Your pump might cycle a few times a day normally; a running toilet could cause that to be every 30 min, and at that rate you could need a new pump in a year or two instead of 10.

Trickling your faucets (just a drip-drip-drip) for a few days is a small amount of extra wear on your pump in exchange for not rupturing pipes.

Ooph, yeah this is going to be a nightmare for home insurance to unwind it all and deal with everything at such a big level.

Why don't pipes in areas prone to this sort of thing have some of cheaply replaceable burst disc relief valve, given how catastrophic an uncontrolled failure of the pipework is?

I don't think relief valve will help with freezing pipes. Freezing pipes burst because ice is less dense than water, so water expands as it turns into ice. Pipes freeze on the outside first, resulting in remaining water being entrapped in ice. As remaining water freezes, it can't move into relief valve.

I'm not thinking of a mechanical valve - a burst disc essentially is an engineered weak point, designed to fail first. It would have enough clearance for the ice to be forced out through it, and be in a location with sufficient drainage that water damage would be minimised when the ice melts.

It sounds like the answer is that to be effective, you'd have to put too many of them along the length of the pipework.

Water expands about 9% when it freezes. It's not a question of pressure relief, it's a question of the pipe bursting in multiple locations as it freezes end to end if you have lost heat in the house. The pipes don't leak until the ice melts.

PEX handles freezing pretty well

That's not recommended for some areas of Texas. There's low water pressure and water has to be conserved.[1]

(Edit: Houston only.)

[1] https://www.wfaa.com/article/weather/if-dripping-faucets-sav...

Consult your local regulations of course. But frozen pipes are no joke and can turn a brand new, perfect home into a condemned tear-down, rebuild in a matter of hours.

For those in that situation, turn off the water to your home and drain the pipes. Bursting pipes can do massive damage to your home and make it uninhabitable during the rehab.

Two units in my apartment building already flooded because they didn't trickle their water. Trickle means a tiny trickle of drops, not leaving the tap running. Use common sense, not FUD.

Be that as it may. Frozen pipes can be catastrophic.

Honestly probably better to store some water, run your pipes in a tiny stream, and then if you lose water at least your pipes will be drained.

There are issues with restarting a forced hot water furnace if you drain your pipes entirely.

Issues? You just need to restore water in the circuit and vent the air trapped in the radiators... really

There is what people that have vacation homes do in the winter, shut off the water and drain the water heater and pipes.

... and put a non-toxic antifreeze in the water traps (and seal the drains up) to prevent sewer gas from entering the house.

Remote workers just became a resiliency requirement for businesses.

You would think so but there were rolling blackouts during the bay area/socal fire season last year and nobody seemed to change course. I wonder if it’s because a lot of companies in the Bay Area already had remote workers?

Those were fairly short and did not take out the entirety of the Bay at once.

It already was. 24x7x365 geo redundancy SRE and Ops teams is pretty common place.

Texas was actually a preferred location as the time zone allowed both west coast and east coast work hours.

>Our DR plan didn’t really account for all of our staff being on the same power grid

Yup. I hear you loud and clear.

What does "without septic" mean?

Some septic systems require power for a lift, essentially a pumping station. When the ground is too flat, you need to pump the waste higher than the drain field.

If you've ever seen a septic system with an audible alarm, this is probably why.

If you don't have sewer service, you'll usually have a septic tank instead. It's basically a mini waste treatment plant in your backyard, eventually the water will flow into the ground. Modern systems have pumps and such that depend on electricity to function.

I’ve never heard of a below ground septic system that required pumps. The only pumps for drainage are for sub level bathrooms such as in basements.

There is a significant overlap of septic installations and wells and most modern wells run on electric. But if you’re toilet’s basin is full, it doesn’t need any power to flush and drain. It just won’t fill again.

They're common used in multi stage septic systems that have a perc field above the tank level. If this pump is without power for a significant time, it will cause quite a problem. However usually your tank will have enough free capacity for some hours. You don't see pumps in single tanks very often due to solids blocking the intake.

When one of the pumps on my aerobic system died a few years back it was less than 24 hours before the drains were backed up. If your soil won't pass a perc test I guess you can just go with aerobic which allows you to build pretty much anywhere. The final stage sprays effluent on your yard.

> But if you’re toilet’s basin is full, it doesn’t need any power to flush and drain. It just won’t fill again.

typically there is enough pressure in the tank to allow a flush or two. you don't operate the well pump every time there is demand.

If you have a pressure fed (septic) sewer system, you need electricity for it to work. Usually if you avoid excessive water use, your holding tank has a bit of reserve.

Sewer systems, i.e. toilets and waste water.

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