Came across this photo today. I don't doubt that it's real.

The home next to us froze up a year ago January, when the owners were
away for the winter. I was the one who first noticed it when I saw three
large dirty brown frozen "waterfalls" on the outside of one of their
garage doors. It's a year later now, the house is stiull unoccupied, and
the owners are still negotiating with their insurer over the issue of
their "abandonment" without taking any appropriate safeguards to prevent
the several hundred thousand dollars of water damage which occurred.

Sure convinced me that the next time we leave home for more than a day
in the winter I'm gonna remember to at least close the main water
shutoff and invest forty bucks in a low temperature alarm which will
dial up a buddy with a key to our place.

See:

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/jeff/frozenpipes.jpg

Jeff

--
Jeff Wisnia (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"If you can keep smiling when things go wrong, you've thought of someone to place the blame on."