Preventing your pipes from bursting in freezing weather

WHITELAND, Ind. (WISH) — The frigid blasts of air are hitting homes and businesses causing major issues including frozen pipes.

Crews say they’re seeing an uptick in calls for help.

With these frigid temperatures it didn’t take long before a lot of people started to have frozen pipes issues.

“It’s the coldest I’ve ever seen and the wind-chill is crazy,” Ron Grantham, a Whiteland resident, said.

Grantham and his family woke up Friday morning to a big surprise his pipes were frozen.

“Well, not brush our teeth and stuff until we got bottles of water and stuff like that out of the garage,” Grantham said. “We opened up the faucet before last night and everything, but other than that we figured it would be OK this morning, but it wasn’t.”

He says he called a local company to take a look. He says the quick call helped prevent his pipes from bursting, which would have led to bigger problems like flooding.

“It’s very important I mean because you know it’s crucial with the weather outside and hopefully we haven’t come to the extent that pipes have burst,” Grantham said.

“So, as you can see right here I’m turning the faucet on,” the plumbing manager at Complete Comfort, Noah Hale, said.

“You don’t see any water coming out of there as of now. That’s because the pipes are a little bit cold, a little frozen right now, but once we get that unthawed with the hot air coming through there we’ll be perfectly fine,” Hale said.

He wants to give several tips to help others prevent their pipes from freezing, which includes unhooking your water hoses from their outside spigots. Also, try to keep your pipes warm.

“So, as you can see I have these cabinets open here. What this is there’s water line on that the exterior wall and on that exterior wall it can get super, super cold assuming that it’s insulated it’s letting all that hot air flow through there. It kind of keeps those pipes a little bit warmer, so it’s not freezing over time,” Hale said.

Another tip to prevent your pipes from freezing is to let water drip.