Plumbers in N.S. are scrambling after warming temperatures thaw frozen pipes | CBC News

Gavin Hankin of Halifax Plumbing and Heating wasn’t looking forward to Sunday.

“[Sunday] is going to be catastrophic because these [water] lines that have frozen, you know, they’re likely to split and then leak and then flood,” he said late Saturday afternoon.

Hankin was on call and said he received around 100 calls for service to deal with frozen pipes that happened because of the extreme cold that gripped the province.

Temperatures dipped as low as the mid –20s in some parts of Nova Scotia without the wind chill, said CBC meteorologist Ryan Snoddon.

Bitter cold, coupled with power outages that peaked around 30,000 customers, is an awful combination for one’s water pipes.

Hankin said it was the busiest day he’s encountered in a decade.

“I know just from talking to people, just about every company they’ve called either didn’t answer or told them they’re too busy,” he said.

Power outages persist

As of Sunday at 7:58 a.m. AT, Nova Scotia Power was reporting around 2,800 customers without power.

Hankin said frozen pipes are typically a sign of poor insulation in a home.

“A lot of these calls could have been resolved just by the homeowners cranking the heat to an uncomfortable temperature and waiting for them to thaw out,” he said.

Besides having excellent insulation, Hankin said people can prevent pipes from freezing by running their water taps, which he noted is wasteful.

“It takes much colder air to freeze water that’s in motion,” said Hankin.

Busy fire crews

Halifax district fire Chief Pat Kline said crews are going from call to call to help shut off sprinkler systems, mostly in commercial and apartment settings.

“Pipes are breaking all over the city,” he said Sunday morning.

Kline said he’s been on the job for 35 years and every year there’s a day or two that’s this busy.

District 3 fire Chief Rob Hebb said that water flowing through a building from a broken pipe can create an electrical hazard.

“One incident can affect a lot of people,” he said.

Truro fire Chief Blois Currie said his department has received a number of calls for broken pipes.

He said the department responded to a report of a sprinkler break on the top floor of a four-storey apartment building in Truro at about 8 a.m. Sunday.

Currie said power was shut off to the building and residents were evacuated. Some parts of the building were not directly affected by the broken sprinkler, he said.

“When we’re finished with the emergency part of it, we’ll turn it back over to the building owner,” he said.

“They can decide from there when they bring in their their electricians and sprinkler people and cleanup people … who they can get back into the building and when.”

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