Calls about frozen pipes have spiked over the past week due to frigid temperatures, but the city said responses times are down.
Winnipeg has had 402 reports of residents without water due to frozen internal plumbing.
They’ve also had to deal with frozen pipes underground, including 67 on residential properties and four belonging to the city.
But when the calls do come in, they’re answered quickly.
“If your service freezes and then we have to thaw it, we’re generally, even in a very busy winter, we can generally thaw you by the end of the next calendar day,” Tim Shanks, manager of water services, said.
Improvements in response times and thawing capability have allowed the city to avoid having to encourage people run their water preemptively.
RELATED: City trying to thaw out hundreds of frozen pipes (Feb. 26, 2014)
“We had an enormous amount of experience in the winter of 2013/2014 and thawing a lot of services, improving the equipment, giving a lot of training and experience with the stuff we have,” Shanks said.
“We have the most experienced staff in any utility that I’m aware of in terms of the number of thaws we do and the frequency of it.”
“After we thaw an underground pipe, we do recommend a resident runs the water,” Shanks said, noting that the city also hasn’t advised anyone to run their water as a preventative measure for more than four years.
Shanks said the frost depth is normal for this time of year, showing that many instances of frozen pipes have been the result of cold air temperatures.
That said, the chilly Christmas period did see an rise in calls to the city to thaw pipes.
READ MORE: Winnipeg’s winter weather causing plumbing issues
“We did get a very large increase in calls especially starting on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day – and New Years Eve was a very busy day for us in terms of call volumes,” Shanks said.
“But again, it’s related to the air temperature and the overwhelming majority of those calls were internal pipe freezes. And those calls have started to drop off. It’s not exactly really warm out right now but it’s a little better than it was a few days ago and so the calls are definitely dropping off.”
The city has a list of preventative measures residents can take to protect their pipes during cold weather, including the following:
- heat areas of your home containing internal pipes
- set your thermostat no lower than 12°C at night or when you’re out of the house
- keep cabinet doors open to let heat warm uninsulated pipes under sinks
- close garage doors if there are water pipes inside the garage
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