My House Is Exploding

• Space Pirate Nithiel wrote on 2014-01-07 03:01
  So, as you may or may not know it is -40F where I live and we have no indoor heating. We normally get by with little space heaters, but then again it's normally not -40 in winter.
  
  Anyway, point being I just heard what sounded like an explosion from inside one of our walls and it shook the entire house. I'm thinking it must be related to the cold because it has done several smaller ones throughout the day, and it has never done this before.
  
  Why is my house exploding guys? Am I gonna die? D: :gloom3:
• Shanghai wrote on 2014-01-07 03:59
  Wood(even in foundations) seems to expand and contract based on heat, seeing as it's pretty cold that might be the cause of it? Highly doubt it would create an explosion-like sound though, creaking at best.
• Space Pirate Nithiel wrote on 2014-01-07 04:21
  Yeah, this was definitely an explode-y sound.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-01-07 04:42
  That's a frost quake. Water freezes underground and expands, creating pressure. These can get pretty loud.
  Nothing to worry about.
• Aubog007 wrote on 2014-01-07 04:51
  How the hell do you even live without heating, our heater broke 2 winters ago and it wasnt nearly as cold, but man, i couldn't even function right, 3 warmest spots those 2-3 days before we got it fixed was the living room, (fireplace), basement (small heater), and one of the bedrooms. I hate the cold, i absolutely hate it.
  
  

  Quote from Yoorah;1185294:

  That's a frost quake. Water freezes underground and expands, creating pressure. These can get pretty loud.
  Nothing to worry about.

  
  
  Interesting, we never get those around here... I will have to see if we can even get those, our sewer and piping system is made differently.
• Aubog007 wrote on 2014-01-07 04:52

  Quote from Yoorah;1185294:

  That's a frost quake. Water freezes underground and expands, creating pressure. These can get pretty loud.
  Nothing to worry about.

  
  
  Interesting, we never get those around here... I will have to see if we can even get those, our sewer and piping system is made differently.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-01-07 05:04
  It's not the sewer/piping. You'd be screwed if those froze and exploded.
  It's just moisture underground that's doing it. It's fairly rare usually, but many have reported them here over the past few days, likely ice storm related.
• Space Pirate Nithiel wrote on 2014-01-07 05:17

  Quote from Aubog007;1185299:

  How the hell do you even live without heating, our heater broke 2 winters ago and it wasnt nearly as cold, but man, i couldn't even function right, 3 warmest spots the 2-3 days before we got it fixed was the living room, (fireplace), basement (small heater), and one of the bedrooms. I hate the cold, i absolutely hate it.

  
  
  Well. we don't enjoy it, lol. No choice though really, they said it would be somewhere around 15 grand to fix if I remember correctly. So we mainly just buy blankets.
  
  

  Quote from Yoorah;1185294:

  That's a frost quake. Water freezes underground and expands, creating pressure. These can get pretty loud.
  Nothing to worry about.

  
  
  This came from inside the house though, wouldn't that be an external sound?
• Aubog007 wrote on 2014-01-07 05:30

  Quote from Yoorah;1185301:

  It's not the sewer/piping. You'd be screwed if those froze and exploded.
  It's just moisture underground that's doing it. It's fairly rare usually, but many have reported them here over the past few days, likely ice storm related.

  
  
  I said what i said because we don't derive our water from a well source, (we used to where we lived before, now our water comes from the city)
  So that's what i meant about the moisture, since we don't have a lot of moisture in that sense. Or else we would have heard something when Lake Michigan froze over years ago.
  
  
  Or actually, i think i contradicted myself unintentionally, whatever.
• 800mans wrote on 2014-01-07 05:33
  nithiel its likely not any important part of your house. Pretty sure the house designer would have chosen material that could compensate for dimension changes due to cooling. 40 degrees isnt alot (in terms of changing dimensions of a material) its probably a couple of mm at most-> most likely one tenth or one hundredth of a mm. My best guess would be yoorah's answer + the *frost quake* happened really close to your house and your house maybe isn't great at insulating external sound.
  
  If you're really worried I would check for places in your house where the material is old/degrading (full of cracks, pores, etc.)-> maybe water seeped in and froze.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-01-07 05:49
  Yep, it probably happened near/under your house and you felt like it came from the inside.
• Space Pirate Nithiel wrote on 2014-01-07 13:20
  So it turned out to be a pipe and it exploded and I woke up to the house flooding.
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-01-07 15:18
  When I read the first post I was going to say it's probably a pipe. Then I saw the last post.
• Arsik wrote on 2014-01-07 15:21

  Quote from Osayidan;1185407:

  When I read the first post I was going to say it's probably a pipe. Then I saw the last post.

  
  
  Same, except I didn't bother to comment when people starting to talk about frost quakes, so I decided to see how long it took for common sense to show up. Turns out it didn't until after the fact. D:
• Snowie Stormflower wrote on 2014-01-07 15:23
  Guess this thread just went BOOM!