Well, it's been exactly 30 days since we've had running water, and I'm pleased to report that the water is back on in our house. The plumber came and agreed with Vagho's assessment: the portion of the pipe which entered up into the concrete floor of our bathroom was frozen, and the thermal heat sink of all that concrete was making it pretty damn hard to thaw the pipe. His solution? Just chip away at the concrete around the pipe.
Seriously- the man got out a hammer and chisel, and just went to town on the concrete slap, resulting in a 6" deep, 8" wide ditch in the concrete around the pipe.
Then we were able to hold the little electric heater up to the gap and start thawing the pipe. The plumber would have preferred to use a hair dryer, and was borderline horrified when he learned that I didn't know such a device, but the heater seemed to do the job well enough.
In the end, between the plumber and the heater on the outside, and Sam blowing into the tub nozzel to provide pressure from the inside, we got the ice plug out of the pipe. Sam even got to show is manliness by helping the plumber with the pipe-melty-tool: something I was forbidden from even touching just in case my girly cooties got all over it. (I'm making the part about girl cooties up, but I am getting sick and tired of not being allowed to participate in all the interesting ways that folks build/repair/replace things around here).
I suppose I shouldn't complain: at the end of the day we have running water, and that's what matters. Unfortunately, all I want to do is collapse into bed, but now the real work starts: We have to wash every dish in the house and I have to run every piece of laundry we own in this country through the machine and hang it up to dry. We've also been rather lax on housekeeping, so that means that I'll have to sweep, mop, and tidy all rooms of the house- and don't even get me started on the hell that is our bathroom these days... I guess we know how I'll be spending the next few days...
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