Why Trying To Save Money During The Winter Can Be A Bad Idea

Here's what the top of a washing machine in Quebec 
looked like after they shut off the heat in the apartment
while away to "save  money" The pipes burst, and
this was some of the result

Heating a home in the winter is expensive, we all know that. 

We're all torn between keeping warm and affording to keep the furnace on. But somebody in Quebec took the desire to save money way too far. 

In Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, along the St. Lawrence River about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City, an apartment tenant recently left for an extended period, probably on vacation.  

That tenant apparently thought to themselves,  "Why pay for heat in my apartment when I'm not going to be there?"

It appears they said this. In January. In Quebec. 

You guessed it! The inevitable happens. Pipes froze and burst. The toilet cracked, sending water through the floor into the living space below.  The results are captured in a video at the bottom of this post. 

Pretty much everything ended up being covered in ice inside that building. The landlord said the ice on the kitchen floor was nearly a foot thick. The washing machine looked like an elaborate ice sculpture. Clothes folded atop the dryer were just one big frozen mass. 

Put it this way, the apartment "ice castle" in Trois-Rivieres is not nearly as grand as Elsa's castle in the movie "Frozen," as the CTV reporter dryly notes. 

The landlord seemed to be taking the mess in pretty good humor, if we can judge from his CTV interview. He said the whole apartment will need to be ripped apart and rebuilt. That is, after the ice eventually melts. He's got heaters in there to bring a spring thaw to the apartment, but as you'll see in the video, it'll take awhile.

The former tenant whose name is on the lease was formally evicted earlier this month after having moved out several months ago without paying rent. It's unclear who was living there and turned off the heat just prior to their departure. 

The "ice castle" apartment is part of a triplex, but the tenants living in the other two units within the building were not affected.

Here's the video. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.