PaulinEger

Thought I'd share this link. It's currently showing the ice flowing down the Danube in Budapest.

EarthCam - Budapest Cam

We travelled back from Eger last night and it got down to -21*c.
This morning I got up to -18*c and frozen pipes so no water in the house (now sorted)

wolfi

You have to be careful there with the extreme frost. A friend of mine left his house near the Balaton some winter for a month, someone from the family should have looked regularly but didn't so when he came back ...
The gas heating had stopped, all pipes were frozen and even the toilet bowls had cracks because of the extreme cold in the house!

That was a real mess to sort out ...

At least after a grey Xmas we now have one inch of snow near Hévíz - looks nice ...

PaulinEger

We were supposed to go to our weekend house for Christmas/New year but due to frozen pipes and a bad back I called it off. I hope the pipes haven't burst now due to this extremely cold spell (which isn't over yet). I really need to spend a day there to defrost the pipes and empty the systems before it's too late.

wolfi

One of our neighbour here has a few apartments to rent and he only lives here in the summer. So at the end of Sept/early Oct they drain all the pipes and the heating radiators - and even put some antifreeze in the toilet bowls now!

But every spring they have to clean off fungus somewhere because the whole house gets so damp.

Our heating expert told us it would be easier to also add antifreeze to the heating system (pipes and radiators) but that sounds a bit expensive ...

Sachina

Apart from one house, we've had no water in our village since Friday morning because the main water pipes are frozen Temperatures have hovered around the -13C mark during the day and anything between -15C to -20C at night, plus the chill factor due to the gale force winds.

The one neighbour who for some reason does have water is keeping the village supplied and tomorrow, our mini bus driver will be delivering another 12 x 1.5 l bottles of water to add to the 6 I already had.

The last time all the pipes were frozen was around 7 years ago when I didn't have water for 3 weeks.

Ah well! One of the joys of living in Hungary!

BEVS

Oh wow. I can see it via the previous frames.

Amazing.

spouse of scouse

Thanks so much for this link, I've only visited Budapest once but it's one of the best places I've ever been to, absolutely loved it. Mind you, for an Aussie only just getting used to the north-west UK weather, I think temperatures like that might kill me!

Peter_in_Hungary

Not that expensive, most gas heating systems are fairly low volume rads and boilers. Even if you drain the system you have to make sure that all the pipes actually drain and you are not left with a dip in the pipe that will hold water, which usually means blowing it through with a compressor. Whilst there is central heating anti freeze an lot of people here use car antifreeze.

By the way we hit a new record (low) temperature on the farm (Tapolca area) 07:15 this morning was -21deg.

wolfi

Thanks, Peter, for that info - it might be useful for some people.

Re temperatures:
Seems we're lucky near Hévíz - only minus 15deg and today even around zero and some sunshine,so I put out some washing for a few hours before transferring it into the dryer.