TEXAS POLAR VORTEX | We Weren't Prepared For This

assessing the damage from this warner storm it's not looking good inside this pop house things just got way more difficult i wish we could go back so we have some pretty insane low temperatures currently heading our way like sub-zero temperatures possibly and you guys know that we do sleep in the cargo trailer and that's just not going to work for this because it only has a very small layer of insulation of foam so we're going to be staying in the house for these really cold nights all of us dogs included and um just work on staying warm because we do have a heater in here it's not the mini splits obviously we don't have that all hooked up yet but we do have a small heater so we'll be staying here and staying nice and warm [Music] oh my god look at the dog [Music] this is awesome i feel like i've always only had the ones that had a separate pump and then you lose it but seriously if this was just a murphy bed perfect did i get the wall yeah yeah i know crackers gets up way too many times to to be on the inside this is pretty cool now if only we could actually see the stars all clouds oh my gosh this is a little difficult for me to get up though okay we're good [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right so we had an awfully cold night last night as you can tell by all the uh snow on the ground and it's still snowing now tonight's actually one of the coldest nights so i want to come out and check on the water tanks and yeah it's it's been quite interesting i i opened up one of the tanks and i couldn't get it open by hand i had to use a hammer it's probably not the best way to open it but i had to use a hammer in order to get it to crack open because it was frozen and yeah whole top of the tank was frozen so let's check on another one see how this goes [Music] oh look at that crack this open [Music] as you can see the water coming into the tanks frozen and then the top layer close your eyes i mean it for a second close your eyes baby do your best to concentrate your mind fix it upon whatever you like i'm drunk on a memory [Music] i know there's a lot of snow on the ground out there right now the weather outside is frightful it really is i do not want to go over to that barn and do dishes what did it say what does it feel like right now three degrees oh my gosh all right so second night in the house because of the severe cold well last night it snowed a lot so uh yeah first thing i gonna do this morning is let the dogs out and like i said there is a lot of snow outside you boys ready doesn't even know what to do [Music] [Music] oh my gosh you guys i don't think we're in florida anymore it is so bright i cannot believe we have this much snow here right now this is by far the most snow we have ever had here i just i cannot get over this i feel like i'm in a different place it is so beautiful i have never been so cold [Music] we are not prepared for this this doesn't even feel real right now i know i didn't think we would get this much snow i guess when it does know is nose yeah right spencer measured it and it's seven inches out there [Music] i think she's having a little trouble there that's the that's the method kick and [Music] scoop [Music] kill speed um okay we're starting to slide spencer we'll get up there baby as soon as we clear some of this snow out of here too are you serious okay [Music] too much adventure for one day i know like did she fall asleep as we were driving up that hill probably okay so we just ran to town to grab some extra supplies and uh some extra groceries we left the dogs out because i mean they were cooped up inside with us all night and yeah so we figured yeah they'll be fine out here well these little wise guys figured out since the pond is frozen that they can just go around the fence so we come back to them just out running about so i gotta break this uh break this ice and hopefully deter them from getting out again [Music] [Applause] you know what i think i see where they ventured out see a little paw prints on the ice so i think it's safe to say that we were not prepared for this yeah not at all we anticipated cold but not this cold uh we have had how many days of freezing temperatures i've lost count yeah it's it at first we're like oh okay we'll make it through because the water tanks we made it probably four or five days without them freezing starting to freeze over a top layer yeah now they're just giant ice cubes and this might not sound bad but th this is not normal here like we did not build our whole water system out there to be able to withstand this kind of cold because we don't get this kind of cold yeah like this is so abnormal so some of the things that we've been running into like he said the water like everything is frozen our tanks are frozen solid every even before that some of the lines in the pump house were frozen so we weren't able to get our water out to the shower so obviously we can't get any water inside the house for flushing toilets or anything and yes we can just fill the tank above the toilet to flush it but when getting water is so difficult and it's very precious uh that's not really what we want to be doing is putting it inside of our toilet we've had to be very selective pretty much it's been boiled down to uh the toilet water has been i'll go out crack the pond and use some of the pond water to flush the toilet like nothing froze for we had probably before the tank started freezing four or five days of freezing temperatures and then the tank started freezing and then we noticed that inside the pump house some of the lines started freezing and that's when it just went downhill fast from there yeah once you have no water life is no fun yeah life has just it's become a little bit more difficult because your days now are just filled with okay how do i get water how do we get food how do we make food because you know our kitchen is over in the barn and i can't be going over there in these freezing temperatures and cooking and we get freezing temperatures here like every winter but then in the morning normally the sun comes out yeah and it raises above freezing temperature so so things might yeah freezing pipes aren't a thing yeah tanks definitely aren't a thing of freezing i can't believe that happened but i guess we have to uh revamp that whole situation out there right so there's all that um power spencer has had to run the generator a couple of times and as far as the solar panels with all the snow he's having to go out there and knock all the snow off which i know can't be fun no not not when you don't have the proper gloves i know this is the thing we're just we're literally we're not prepared at all like we don't have the proper clothes we don't have any of that stuff yeah i got some like thinly insulated gloves i don't even have gloves like so there's all that and then on top of that we're having some issues with our heater in here yeah we have an indoor safe propane heater a big body heater and it's a lifesaver but at the same time oh by the way we do have a carbon monoxide detector before we even turn that thing on we went and got one but uh yeah it's so it helps keep it warm in here but burning the propane releases moisture and that moisture condenses on all the cold surfaces which happen to be our windows our far wall in the living room the shipping container wall and if we turn that heater off to go to town or whatever we'll come back to all this being frozen once we get the ac up and running the mini splits that won't be an issue because the mini splits will be producing dry heat not releasing moisture so that none of this will be an issue once the ac is up and running but right now it's just one hurdle after another i know but on the bright side can you imagine if our house hadn't been spray phoned yet oh no i couldn't like i i just i don't know what we'd be doing yeah yeah so how all that condensation on the windows freezes whenever we turn the heater off then whenever we turn it back on it starts to melt and then it goes and it starts touching the drywall yeah it pulls on the ledge of the windowsill and just but what are we supposed to do you know we just need this cold to go away yeah go back to the arctic right so things definitely haven't been easy but you know we're okay and uh i think one good thing that we have learned from this experience is that there are some things that we need to change about our home because we want our house to be able to withstand more extreme weather conditions we just didn't know that it was going to need to be this extreme but now we do yeah but this this is like way off the end of extreme normally you get like maybe a little bit of dusting on the ground of snow and uh every five to ten years you might get a couple inches this is just like an arctic blast living in a winter wonderland it's easy for us to say this has been our toughest winter out here yet in addition to all the things we talked about we also lost the internet right when the storm started and we still don't have it back up and running we were lucky to have the heater but we had to be really conservative with using it because all the stores ran out of propane this is the exact reason why our finished home will only rely on renewable resources we used it on medium in the beginning and then had to put it down on low so we wouldn't run out it was not nearly enough to heat our home and it was not warm inside the house but it was much warmer than outside there were mornings when it would drop down to sub-zero temperatures outside and it said it felt like negative 15. we stayed warm by bundling up under a heater blanket at night [Music] all right well assessing the damage from this warner storm it's not looking good inside this pump house the tanks actually i'm surprised uh they're not totally frozen over uh if you hit it down low enough you can still feel water moving around sloshing around in there but uh yeah there's a good layer up top so inside all right so first thing is in here that i've noticed is uh right here above the check valve is broken up there it is and then on over to our well pump this is cracked in half i haven't noticed anything with the uh pressure tank quite yet so fingers crossed that that's all right i think it should be i think since there's a bladder in there and it can expand it should be okay but i'm not 100 sure yet oh wow that filter up here to our first filter before the charcoal filter just completely exploded on over to the charcoal filter this top cap right here looks like it's totally starting to separate from the filter itself i don't know if that's fixable or not yet we'll have to take it apart and see i think that's it for as far as damage goes the peck seems okay and the uv light seems okay but other than that everything else seems oh and the uh pressure tank but other than that everything else seems not good he's so cute you need a little warm cocoon yeah so this is definitely a worst case scenario kind of situation that we have because having clean water here is obviously top on the priority list and now we don't have it so we're gonna have to go back to hauling water in and running around to try to do everything else because now that this has all happened i mean we have to wait for the water tanks to melt we have to fix everything in this pump house get everything ordered spencer's going to fix it all hopefully nothing else is wrong like anything underground or anything and until we do all of that we don't have drinking water we don't have a shower a toilet or laundry like it's just it's funny we were talking about this earlier we felt like before like things were kind of hard sometimes you know like having to go outside and grab our water and not just having it come out of a faucet and everything and man just things just got way more difficult i wish we could go back i will never complain again [Music] you

Channel: Life Uncontained

Views: 1,162,220

Keywords: polar vortex, texas polar vortex, off grid, living off grid, shipping container home, shipping container house, container home, snow storm, frozen pipes, tiny home, tiny house, self reliance, alternative living, vlog, drywall

Id: v8_od-Yidls

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021