Jan 2025 - Snow & Freezing Conditions - Discussion PART II

The footpaths are already glistening near Mallow. Went out and had a few skates even minding myself.

There was a very light sprinkle of rain - about 2 minutes long - an hour ago in Westport. Was hoping for a dry evening/night considering the temperatures expected.

Here's a question that might be better suited to the DIY forum or something, but at what temperature do you need to be concerned about the attic water storage tank? I have a well that serves my house and the pump house is well insulated with a heat lamp in there to keep the temps above freezing. Then there are two pipes running from there into the house, one for the attic storage tank and one for the kitchen sink, but no idea what depth they are. My house is insulated but the water storage tank is in the crawlspace of the attic and there are gaps along the soffits as well as soffit vents that will allow plenty of cold air into that space. The insulation really needs to be redone in my house but that's not happening this evening! I expect the heat from the house would keep the space well above freezing regardless of its exposure, but would just be interested to know.

All our snow is solid now, I wasn't sinking in at all. It's like a skating rink out there (near Kanturk)

It depends on a lot of factors. It would really depend how much heat is getting from the main house into the attic space and how cold the temps get for a sustained period. I presume you have at least 100mm of rockwool on the floor of the attic space but zero in the roof rafters. Whether you have the newer thin slates or the old thicker slates would also be a small factor. It sounds like your insulation is poor so some heat would be escaping up. You should be fine. We had 200mm of rockwool on floor of attic in 2010 when it hit -15 and our water storage tanks did not freeze. Now I did open the door to the attic before bedtime to let some of the house heat up which might have helped. I also covered the tanks.

I have a temp sensor i my attic with an electric heater on smart plug just in case but agree.... There is enough heat leaking up to keep it a few degrees warmer.

Imho it needs to remain below freezing night and a few days before tank will freeze.

so funny online oh it’s going to be -7 out country never seen this. It was -18 in 2010 lol

delete

Right this was a novelty for a day but wish it would go away now- roads ok ish around Kilkenny but footpaths are just lethal. No pleasure whatsoever in getting around. Beast from the east was better in terms of getting around I don’t remember the paths being so bad- I think schools made the right decision again to close as having hundreds of students all gathering in roads and streets like this is asking for accidents to happen

Schools confirmed closed in Portumna (east Co Galway) and surrounds for tomorrow. Kids are delighted, as am I as didn’t fancy being out trying to traverse it. Big freeze again Wednesday night so perhaps they’ll stay closed until Friday

I honestly can’t see schools in effected areas opening this week. With the thaws and refreezing it’s gotten worse in terms of safety moving around

The LP sliding to our south tomorrow is sending quite a bit of cloud our way currently, running through the animation.

Will be typical of the whole thing for tonight to end up cloudy for much of the island and temperatures are held around or above freezing. Looks like it be Wednesday night before things get properly cold, as the snowfields down south may be under a bank of cloud over night tonight.

I hope that incoming cloud cover stays around tonight, met.ie app shows -8c for my location (SW of Portlaoise), really don't want any trouble with frozen pipes!

Obviously Met Eireann missing mild sectors was mentioned last night. Here we go again with high cloud down South. We are only amateurs following a hobby yet we can figure out a low pressure down South will of course cause cloud cover and higher temps. Let's see what happens overnight but If this proves true it really isn't good enough