Frozen pipe problem irks residents
Every winter Lorne Weiner turns on the tap in his basement bathroom and leaves it running 24/7.
He and the 20 or so other homeowners on Baderwood St. in Dollard-des-Ormeaux are both following a city directive and using a good measure of common sense. If they don’t keep the water running around the clock, their pipes will freeze. And the problem has been going on for decades.
“It’s not so much about the inconvenience,” Weiner said. “What bothers me is that so much water is being wasted.”
Mayor Ed Janiszewski told the Montreal Gazette that the water wasted every winter on Baderwood St. amounts to a fraction of one per cent of what is lost in the city of Montreal every year due to leaks.
He said Dollard won the top prize in the province in 2015 for its infrastructure maintenance.
The complication on Baderwood St., however, is particularly tricky.
The problem is not with the wide, main pipe buried under the middle of the street and running the length of Baderwood. It doesn’t freeze because there is always water flowing through it.
The problem is the one-inch-indiameter pipe which connects the main water flow to each home. A portion of that pipe is on city property and a portion is on private property. The narrow, secondary pipe is not always in use and can freeze during the coldest months of the year.
Weiner has discussed the issue with both the mayor and with an engineer. Weiner said the engineer suspects that in 1965 when the development was built, construction workers hit bedrock and instead of drilling through it at added expense, they installed the pipes and hoped for the best.
“The northwest sector of our city does have a lot of bedrock,” Janiszewski said.
When Weiner bought his house 19 years ago, he was told nothing about the pipe problem.
“A homeowner is required to report any such deficiencies when selling a property,” Janiszewski said. “We believe that this did not happen during most resales on Baderwood St.”
The mayor said it isn’t clear whether the developer laid the pipes to code in 1965 and he can’t verify one way or another because they can’t find the documentation.
Janiszewski plans to meet with each homeowner individually at the end of the winter so that the city can “properly evaluate the situation in all the homes.”
He said the cost of fixing the connecting pipes could run as high as $20,000 per house, depending on how elaborate the front path, landscaping and front entrance is. The city has offered to pay for 100 per cent of repairs on city land and 50 per cent of repairs on private land.
The idea is to install a heating line along the connecting pipe. The repair would be tried on one home to gauge its success.
Weiner doesn’t believe homeowners should pay for a mistake they didn’t know existed.
Weiner worries that the pipe problem will have a negative impact on the value of his home if he decides to sell.