Beginning on 23 December and continuing into Christmas Eve, an unprecedented demand for electricity almost collapsed the the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) power grid which services 156 power companies throughout 7 states including most of Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia and nearly 10 million people. In fact, Foreclosurepedia GHQ has been impacted over the past several days with rolling blackouts every 15 minutes. For the first time in our lifetime, the pipes in our bathroom and kitchen froze solid. The only saving grace was that I ran pex plumbing when I built our home.
To that point, throughout the TVA coverage area, there is an almost certainty of catastrophic water pipe failure regardless of how competent the winterization was performed. The easiest way to understand this is the concept of a metal roof barn. During the evening, the moister that condenses on the inside of the metal freezes and come morning, as it defrosts, it begins dripping down much like a brief rain shower. The point here is that it is impossible to remove all of the moisture from any household plumbing system. Additionally, all plumbing systems generally have sway in them allowing for pooling of water which, in turn, becomes the weakest links contributing to compromised plumbing. Ergo, with historic lows and for a prolonged period of time, vacant houses where both financial institutions and the US government alike refuse to activate utilities.
