Neighbours helping each other gain access to running water due to a frozen line this winter do not have to worry about facing costlier bills.
Gary Edom, administrator for the Town of Davidson, said people running a heated hose from their house to their neighbours so they could have pressurized water will not have their water bill affected. He said the town is going to “make it right” for anybody that is helping people affected by the unusual cold that so far has frozen four resident’s lines in town during the past couple weeks.
“It’s copper lines…from the water main in the street into the house,” said Edom. “Exactly where they’re frozen we don’t know for sure. There is no way of telling. It’s somewhere between the water main and the house that they are frozen somewhere down in the ground.”
Davidson Mayor Clayton Schneider said his neighbour, Gloria Zdunich, is one of the people suffering from a frozen line this winter and his family is going to be helping her have access to running water until Mother Nature thaws the ground and frees the line from this winter’s icy grip.
“I got a heated hose from the farm and I hooked it up to my outlet on my house and hooked it into her outlet,” said Schneider. “I have a plug in to keep electricity (running) through the hose, so it doesn’t freeze because when we initially did it we just used a normal garden hose and it froze overnight. Just that little bit of heat in the hose works well.”
Schneider said the fix pressurizes Zdunich’s water system, so along with keeping a tap in the basement running to ward off another freeze she can now get water in the same way she was before. He said to make sure his family doesn’t get overcharged on their water bill for helping their neighbour they took a picture of their water meter when they began the fix and will again once the line unfreezes.
“The difference will be compensated,” he said. “As far as other people that are helping our their neighbour, if they haven’t done that contact Gary to make sure that is looked after.”
Edom said the town brought in a water line thawing machine from Saskatoon to try and fix the problem lines, but there wasn’t enough cables on the machine to reach from the pipe inside the house to the curb stop. He said current has to flow from one end of the line to the other to unfreeze it, so when the machine didn’t work it was decided the most economical way to fix the problem is just to wait out the cold.
“I’ve never heard about this happening (before),” said Schneider. There are “water breaks and all that, but never this. It’s been an unusual year.”