Yesterday was fun.

When I got home on Monday, I had turned in for a nice little nap when I heard "drip...drip...drip..."

Yeah, the ice dam over the bedroom window had started to melt.

So I ran and got some big towels to put under the window, and looked out to see some truly Brobdingnagian stalactites hanging off of the gutters.  Shit.  So I pulled on my boots, got a big prybar out of the garage, and went around back to knock them down.  Which was easier said than done, because most of them were running 3"-4" in diameter where they came off the guttering.  But I managed to get most of them down and only took a couple of them square in the chest as they fell.  The dripping continued for awhile and then stopped, probably because it got below freezing in the soffit again.

Yesterday the dripping recommenced because it finally got warm enough to start melting the outside surface of the ice.  We didn't get as much drippage but I was fully prepared for there to be more than there was.  Plenty of big fluffy towels were staged on the bed :)

So later in the afternoon, I was standing around in the kitchen, looking out the kitchen window at the ice on the back of the house and wondering why that ice dam wasn't melting the same way as the one in the bedroom, when suddenly I heard a "pop" and then the sound of running water.  Running water that sounded like the dishwasher filling, which I knew was bogus because the dishwasher was a) not running and b) open.

"Damn," said I, "It must be that hose bibb on the back of the house."  So I walked over to the mudroom door and looked outside.

Nope, wasn't the hose bibb.  It was the plastic hose reel, where the connection tube had broken off (probably because it had frozen and burst, and the ice finally melted in yesterday's tropical warmth) and water was pouring out of the feeder hose.  Oops.  I guess I forgot to turn that off at the wall last fall.

So I climbed under the kitchen sink and managed to get the inside valve for the hose bibb turned off, which was no small task...the round handle is broken so you can't really get a good hold on it, and on top of that, it's so old and limed up that I had to use "adjustable pliers" to get it started.  But I managed.

Given that I was gone for a week, I'm sure glad it decided to wait until I got home to break loose.  But now I have an excuse to get in there and replace the undersink plumbing this year, and also put in a freezeproof hydrant instead of that crappy old hose bibb.  And put in all new 1/4-turn valves, too!  I never bother to turn the outside line off in the winter because it's such a pain in the ass...well, next winter that's going to change.