Large icicles hung off the front of the old bathroom sink at the Aldergrove museum due to a large leak in the hot water tap, both feeder pipes on the kitchen sink were split, the bathroom floor was a skating rink, and water was making its way towards some of the historic artifacts.
During the mid-January cold snap the thermostat for the museum’s furnace died, and as a result of the cool temperatures, pipes froze inside the old building, explained Tami Quiring, president of the Alder Grove Heritage Society.
“I got a call from the security company around 6 p.m. on Jan. 16 to say the water leak alarm had gone off. Just what anyone wants to hear with a building full of irreplaceable artifacts and a roast in the oven,” Quiring shared.
She called vice-president Brenda Haid, who lives minutes from the museum, turned off the oven, grabbed her husband, Scott White (also a director), and high-tailed it to the old telephone building on 271st Street and 32nd Avenue.
“The pipes under the kitchen sink were happily washing the kitchen floor, the bathroom sink was frozen solid (and full of ice), there was a frozen pool of water all over the bathroom floor, water was leaking into the crawl space, and had just started to work its way into the centre room in the building,” she recounted.
Thankfully, Quiring said, the toilet tank had not yet frozen solid.
She called in further help including directors Teresa Spring and Andrew Wilkie, and with two wet vacs in the crawl space, they were able to clean up and dry off the furnace.
“We are so lucky that the furnace didn’t short out and cause a fire,” she said, noting that White was able to fix the thermostat and get the furnace running again.
“Nothing of historic value in the way of documents and photos got wet – Brenda had built a dam of kitchen towels to make sure no water flowed towards our storage area where there were some boxes on the floor,” Quiring noted.
Old Aldergrove Star issues, which are stored in the crawl space, are protected in Rubbermaid containers, she added, offering reassurances. And almost everything else, she said, sits up on 2 x4 boards.
“Some boxes did get wet in the crawl space, but they only had excess telephones and empty picture frames in them.”
Fearful the water shut off in the building might have also frozen, Quiring requested the Township to turn off the water at the street.
“Overall, it took about three hours to get everything sopped up and the ice shoveled out of the bathroom. A box fan was put in the crawl space to keep the air circulating, and we had some space heaters running upstairs to help warm things up. We turned the space heaters off when we left, as we were all leery of leaving them on unattended. The temperature was up to nine degrees when we called it a night.”
Then, she added with a bit of a chuckle, of course it snowed overnight.
That made going to check the building the next few days “loads of fun,” Quiring said, noting that when they did arrive they were grateful to find the furnace was still going and the temperature was up to about 18 degrees.
Like a number of homes, commercial operations, and non-profit facilities around Langley, the Aldergrove Community Museum & Archives was hit by last month’s cold snap and forced to shut down the museum for a few days for clean up and repair.
With repairs complete during the weeks that followed, part of it during the museum’s annual winter break, the heritage facility was back up and open to the public the first Sunday of this month.
During the repair work, an unrelated leak was discovered seeping into the crawl space, which the president said will be a priority.
“It’s something that we’re going to have to address sooner rather than later,” she said.
“Now we are just hoping that we don’t see any mould developing under the lino flooring in the kitchen, as the plumber was fairly certain that it may, due to its age… that’s a headache we don’t want to deal with, even on a good day,” Quiring said, expressing gratitude to the directors who came to her aid during the initial crisis period, which she described as a “very stressful situation.”
For more about the museum and the Alder Grove Heritage Society, people can go online.
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