we came back from a week away while much of region was plunged in subzero temperatures. the result? the pipes that supply water to our laundry machine in our poorly insulated mudroom froze. yay (not)!

we’ve had some experience with this over the years and if we know it’s going to get -10F overnight or colder we proactively bring in a space heater to keep the room warm enough to prevent freezing. no such luck at being proactive this time since we were out of town but i thought i’d give it a try only to remember we very cleverly sold our Super Awesome Space Heater. why would we do that? apparently so i’d have to run to Wally World in the freezing cold to check out their selection. SPOILER: their craptacular space heater didn’t unfreeze the pipes.

How’s my first day of 2018? Sub zero temps froze water lines in mud room so laundry machine is not working. Aaaand we have huge pile of laundry. Bought a space heater at Wally World that didn’t work so packaged it up…

— Eric C Snowdeal III (@snowdeal) January 2, 2018

and went back to Wally World to get another one that still seems seriously underpowered for the task at hand. 😐

— Eric C Snowdeal III (@snowdeal) January 2, 2018

when the pipes have frozen in the past ( has happened a couple of times even being proactive with a space heater ) we’ve used a hairdryer to unfreeze them. i was going to do just that today ( but with a more powerful paint removing heating thing ) but made the mistake of googling around and reading horror stories of people heating up frozen pipes that were busted, unleashing A Very Bad Scene when the frozen water becomes a gushing liquid geyser. the frozen pipes are in an inaccessible area under the mudroom ( I KNOW! no access from the basement. who would build a mudroom in wisconsin with water pipes basically running outside exposed with no easy access? who? WHOOOOOOOOOO? ).

do i just go for it and heat them up as i’ve so cavalierly done in the past?

dear internet friends – WWYD ( what would you do )?