I'm not being too serious here. None of the hardships were that great (well, maybe the last one was fairly big...), and though you wouldn't want a cold spell like this one too often, in its own way it was almost fun, really. No, really. Honestly.

This entry bears a date just over a week after the cold snap ended. The last bit, in particular, happened after the ice melted-- though there's plenty of snow still lying around.

Water:
On Monday 22 (day 5), cold water froze in the kitchen sink tap. Hot still worked, and water drained away OK; and everything water-related worked in the bathroom.

By Tuesday morning, we had no running cold water in the house.
From Wednesday 24 until Sunday26, all hot and cold water—including the toilet—had frozen solid. The kitchen sink couldn’t be drained because the outflow pipe had also frozen.

By Saturday 27, water in the toilet bowl was liquid though there was no running hot or cold water anywhere. Once thawed, we added salt regularly to stop it freezing again. Water still exited OK, so it was possible to flush using outside water (filled in a bucket from the lake—at least we had that!)

All other water continued to come from the lake, and was heated as required on the wood burner or the gas stovetop.

Internet
We had no Internet for 2 or 3 days (I’m not sure how I managed to live). I learned later that the transmitter / repeater/ or whatever it is has battery standby for 2 or 3 days, but if it’s off longer than that we have to wait until 4WD access is viable.

Electricity
This one was good news! Although Twizel was without power for 2 or 3 days, we still had our own supply. Normally the solar panels don’t work so well when it’s dull or in winter, but recent modifications to our house supply system mean that we now have electricity 24/7, just like the rest of the country.

General
I didn’t find the extreme cold as difficult as one might expect. Our electricity output doesn’t run to enough for bigger appliances—certainly not electric heating or electric blankets. We get by on a low-draw fridge, a toaster and microwave, and LED lighting throughout. And of course, the real necessities of life like device charging, computer equipment and TV / recorder are also OK. (Not having much electricity is an advantage in some ways: no ironing or vacuuming!)

Anyway, back to the cold: our cooking is done with gas, and although we have a portable gas heater it stays in the lounge (they’re too big a fire risk to use in bedrooms anyway; and fumes (carbon monoxide?) are poisonous in confined spaces like a small bathroom. So our principal source of heat, then, is an amazingly efficient wood burner in the lounge. It can keep that room toasty, and to an extent, the rest of the house as well if doors are open. But that’s not practical when it is as cold as it has been, or, as in our case, when having to ration our wood use. So really we had just the one warm room. (A different problem was that we were running extremely low on firewood and had been using wood cut this year, intended for next winter. A huge pile—two big trailer-loads—of wood was delivered just in time).

Going to bed at night (and getting up in the morning) was pretty chilly! For the coldest 3 or 4 nights I wore to bed long johns and a thermal top under winter pyjamas- and THICK socks, and even a beanie! Bed was warmed with two hot water bottles instead of one, and an extra (thinnish) duvet on top of the three I had anyway. But, with all that, once the bed had warmed up it was very cosy—making it all the harder to get up in the morning, when the temperature outside (outside the bed as well as outside the house) was much colder than it had been the previous night.

Outdoors, of course, was so cold that many layers (including thermals, long johns, merino, wool, and puffer jacket—not to mention warm beanie and thick gloves)—were necessary to maintain some degree of comfort. Just like winter anyway. And yet, for all the icy cold, with all the paraphernalia just described, I was never really cold.

I have suffered a couple of cold-related injuries. A few weeks ago (before the period these notes describe) I was chopping some kindling, and I missed the wood and got my finger. I’d sharpened the tomahawk only the day before, so the result was a deep cut—fortunately not an amputation, as I wasn't using the axe and I was only tapping the wood to split it more finely. Anyway, Margaret was away so I had to drive myself to the medical centre, where I got a tetanus injection and four stitches. Then, a few nights ago while filling a hottie, I tipped boiling water over my thumb and developed a very painful blister, now healing nicely.

And the last thing....

A few nights ago we were watching TV at about 11 pm and just thinking it was really about bed time when Margaret noticed a large pool of water about 1 cm deep lapping at her feet.

As the solid ice in the water pressure-pump had thawed, a serious leak developed and water was literally gushing from the pump, which is located on the floor in one of the bedroom wardrobes. Apart from the floor in half the lounge (where, ignorant of this situation, we had been sitting for the last two or three hours) water had spread/was spreading all over the whole floor of the bedroom containing the pump, the kitchen and pantry, the hallway, the bathroom, and the two end bedrooms, including wardrobes. The only uncarpeted areas were the bathroom and kitchen.

All that was bad enough, but worse was to come. It was 11 pm, there was thick snow on the ground, and we were outside poking around the two rainwater tanks trying unsuccessfully to see where to turn the water off. Nor could we see any obvious valves near the pump to stop the water at that point.

Fortunately--and amazingly, given that there must have been others in similar straits-- we got a plumber out to look at the situation. He couldn't immediately turn off the water either, and he and I were outside working in torchlight, eventually finding the necessary valves (buried under both snow and shingle). He was here till midnight.

Then Margaret and I had to spend the next four hours spreading towels and sheets on the floor, taking them outside in the snow, and wringing as much as we could out of each sodden one before laying them out on the flooded floor again.

A couple of days later, a Timaru carpet-cleaning firm (with a big enough generator on a trailer to power a small city) filled the house with four blowers under the carpets so powerful that the whole carpet rose up to 5 cm in the middle, and wobbled like a waterbed when you walked over it. They also had two dehumidifiers going, one so big it was on wheels and instead of a tank, had a hose to take the water away. Oh--and a couple of heaters.

The generator and all this equipment ran non-stop for several days, and we also kept the log burner going day and night.

An insurance assessor has yet to visit, but we think that there appears to be no lasting damage to the carpets, walls, or the floor underneath. The pump, however, will definitely be replaced!

We had been using water from the lake in buckets (and heating what we needed on the wood burner or stovetop) for several days before all this anyway, so at least we were quite used to that.