Fewer pipes freezing in Mahoning Valley during latest cold snap

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

The minus-9 degree temperature from Monday morning caused only a small number of frozen pipes in residential and commercial structures, compared with the Jan. 8 freeze, said Paul Clouser, president of National Fire and Water Repair.

“It hasn’t been nearly as bad,” Clouser said Tuesday of the calls to his company since the current below-zero cold spell hit the Mahoning Valley several days ago.

For one thing, the temperatures of minus-12 or lower earlier this month were accompanied by high winds, resulting in dramatic wind-chill temperatures.

Wind chills affect water pipes, causing them to freeze more often if the pipes are near an outside wall, Clouser said, adding that the cold this week has not been coupled with high winds.

In addition, the earlier cold spell broke the most vulnerable pipes, Clouser said.

The company, which has offices in Youngstown, Warren and Sharon, Pa., has received about a dozen calls for water damage from frozen pipes since early Monday, compared with about 400 that came in during and after the earlier freeze-up.

Calls for repairs from Jan. 8 continued to trickle in even weeks after the sub-zero weather passed.

“When we got calls from the 8th, it was a catastrophic event,” Clouser said.

The company couldn’t begin to handle all of the work that came in, so it gave out the names of other companies.

“Yeah, it was a bump in business, but it was a lot of pain for a lot of people, and you couldn’t get to — or help — all of them,” Clouser said.

He noticed the number of calls for fire repairs also has gone up, as more people were spending more time in their homes and using alternative heating sources such as space heaters.

“We’ve had about seven fires in the past 10 days,” he said.

Shelly Seese, owner of 1-800 Water Damage in Boardman, said the amount of business her company has gotten from broken water pipes has been steady in January, and she expects it to remain steady because the fittings and soldering on water pipes — especially the hot water pipes — will have loosened because of the intense cold.

The thaw coming later this week also will damage sump pumps that may get overworked, she added, noting that there’s nothing a homeowner can do to prevent damage to the pipes or sump pump.

Eric Clark, owner of Cleanup Services of Boardman, said he’s gotten about 20 to 30 calls about broken water pipes since Saturday but got about 275 during the Jan. 8 freeze.

Clark has been in the water and fire repair business since 1999, and he has “never seen anything like” the Jan. 8 freeze.