City crews on call as freeze wreaks water main havoc
Pipes in peril as frost penetrates deep into ground, Kitchener official says
KITCHENER — The deep freeze gripping the region is driving frost deeper into the ground, causing water main breaks.
“When it starts to get really cold and the frost starts to enter the ground, we see the majority of main breaks at that point in time,” said Tammer Gaber, manager of operations for Kitchener Utilities.
“The frost and the temperature drop, it sort of stresses the pipes and if there are any weak points … they’ll break.”
In the first five days of the new year, the City of Kitchener already has had two breaks. In December, there were 20 breaks, exceeding the December average of 14. Fortunately, none were very serious, said Gaber.
Cambridge has had two breaks since the holiday season started in December. The City of Waterloo was not able to make information available on Friday.
Gaber said most breaks occur within the winter months, which can be challenging for crews who have to fix them, especially when the wind chill makes it feel as cold as -42 C — which Environment Canada expected for the region overnight Friday.
“To work on a water main break in the wintertime you have to dig through the frost,” said Gaber. “On a day like today (where) we have three feet of frost, it could take three or four hours for us to get through the frost.”
By the time February rolls around and the frost drives down five feet, it could take
nearly six hours to get to broken pipes, which sit from six to seven feet underground.
To make sure serious breaks can be repaired as quickly as possible, the City of Kitchener has a crew of four on call to respond day and night.
And while the past few weeks in the region have come under numerous extreme cold warnings with wind chill values at -30 C or colder, main breaks have yet to reach the volume encountered a couple of years ago.
“2014 and 2015 were our worst years; we had 160 breaks in 2014,” Gaber said, adding that the average number of breaks in a year is 110.
“When the frost starts to encase that water main and those services, that’s when we really get in trouble.”
The majority of the breaks occur in older metal pipes. Newer pipes used in the city are made of a type of plastic.
“They tend to do a lot better,” he said, adding that in 2014 and 2015, the infrastructure along the light rail transit route was a lot older and has since been replaced.
In all of 2017, there were only 79 water main breaks in Kitchener.