The next two nights we experience the coldest air we’ve seen all season and plumbers work overtime.
LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pennsylvania – With single-digit temperatures forecast, plumbers are working overtime this week, and so is your heating system, probably.
Bill Keating Jr. of Keating Brothers Plumbing and Heating says when it gets this cold your system won’t respond as quickly as it did in the 30s or 40s, and that’s fine.
“Because of the age, some houses are not properly insulated, like in a new building, and the boiler just works a lot better,” he explains.
Lackawanna County plumbers say most calls this time of year are about it. But if you have a bigger problem, like a unit that is beyond repair, there are currently pandemic production delays.
“The biggest problem is the product; we don’t have many products. Unfortunately, there are no or very few boilers available,” said Wayne Pisanchyn, Wayne J. Pisanchyn Inc. Plumbing & Heating
Wayne Pisanchyn spent Monday morning checking a boiler he had installed just last week; he says this homeowner was lucky enough to get one, especially since it will be cold soon. He doesn’t expect any real problems with freezing pipes this week as it usually takes you three nights in a row to get really cold.
“So we only see two days, two nights of cold weather here. If you have an area that is freezing prone and has been frozen in the past, you need to drain a faucet or be careful,” he said.
And of course the type of water pipe in the house is also important. Copper pipes are more prone to freezing.
“A lot of this new PEX stuff, some of it will expand to 30 times its original size. So it will freeze, it will explode a little, but usually they don’t break. You need to be vigilant and make sure everything in your house is set up exactly as you do in your car, ”Keating said.
After two single-digit nights, it doesn’t get nearly as cold by the end of the week.
Check out the full Stormtracker 16 forecast here.
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