It wasn’t the lovely Valentine’s Day that David Bazinet was expecting.
The Guelph resident woke up Feb. 14 to find that water wasn’t running into his home.
Usual winter culprits like water main breaks and emergency repairs weren’t to blame. In this case, frozen underground pipes were blocking water from making it to the house.
Bazinet called city crews, who quickly figured out where the problem was – but couldn’t do much about it.
“They dug up our driveway and determined that they couldn’t do anything until the thaw,” he says.
For the past 10 days, Bazinet has had to make do without proper running water.
Crews did hook up a temporary line into his house from a fire hydrant, but that water isn’t safe for drinking or cooking.
For water that’s going to be consumed, the city has supplied Bazinet with bottled water.
It’s just one of more than 40 similar stories being dealt with across the city over the past week.
Kier Taylor, Guelph’s supervisor of water metering and distribution, says pipes are freezing at a rate unmatched in recent history.
“We’ve been experiencing a longer and colder winter than we have in a number of years,” he tells CTV News.
The city typically only learns of the frozen pipes when residents call to alert them to a lack of running water.
Taylor says the only common thread between the locations hit is how far underground the pipes are – because it takes longer for frost to travel further down.
“Some will be affected if they happen to be shallower, and some will not be affected if they happen to be deeper,” he says.
Anyone experiencing similar issues is asked to contact the city’s water department.
