RED LODGE — On Thursday, Spencer Stone, with Curb Box Specialists, was hard at work inside an Airbnb in Red Lodge, using a specialized machine to address a frozen pipe problem.
Crouched down in the home's crawl space, Stone pushed a quarter-inch tube down the water service line sending warm water through the pipe to melt the ice.
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“It's warm water through this pipe down to the end of my nozzle. And then the cold water is coming back here and going back into the machine and resupplying. And so, this process then just is slowly heating up the copper pipe and melting that ice plug," Stone said. “I think we're getting close to the end, but you never know where that ice plug is.”
Despite the warming temperatures, Stone noted that people are still facing frozen pipe problems.
“What happens is the frost gets pushed into the ground by vehicles driving over these roads and driveways and stuff. And even though it's nice outside, the constant traffic is pushing that frost further down in the earth. And that's why they start freezing,” Stone said. "People think, 'Oh, it's 40 degrees outside. We're gonna go ahead and shut off our water. We won't have to worry about our house freezing.' And then the underground lines freeze.”
Mike Maples, the Red Lodge public works director, confirmed that there have been five reports of frozen service lines this week, but this figure isn't unusual for winter. Four of those cases were among the general public, and one incident at a city building.
“If you can't deal with it (frozen pipe) and you have to rely on Mother Nature it might take another month or so to thaw out, or two,” Maples said. “Keep your water running a little bit and it will not freeze most likely. So that's an easy fix. A lot easier to fix it that way than try and thaw it out.”
After about two hours of work, Stone was able to successfully break through the ice blockage and restore water to the rental property, which had been without water for nearly a week.
“What will happen is when we know we're through is that this will now have city water pressure in it and so the city water pressure will now suddenly be pushing this black hose out at me and there's no stopping it,” Stone said.
