Sioux Falls is a deep freeze right now. And if this January and February are going to be anything like your typical January and February in South Dakota, we can count on being in and out of Ma Nature's freezer several times over the next several weeks.

Bitter cold temps, like the ones we've been experiencing these past few days, can cause several problems for your home, with one of the biggest being frozen water pipes if you're not careful.

That's why it's very important to be in tune with your home during a time like this.

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INTEK Cleaning and Restoration owner, Jerry Berg, told Dakota News Now, “You need to listen to your house, so if you hear water running someplace and you know you don’t have a facet on, you better go take a peek at what’s going on.”

When it's this cold, and then it starts to warm up, that's when frozen pipes can become a problem. Changing temps during the winter months can create the potential for water pipes to expand and break. If that happens, the next thing you know you've got Old Faithful going off inside your home. And that's something no person is ever prepared for.

Lance Meyerink, INTEK Water Department Manager told Dakota News Now, “People can easily get overwhelmed. This is a situation that people usually never deal with or they only have to deal with once in their life, so they are not really equipped to deal with it.”

What should you do?

It's important to keep your whole home heated on bitterly cold days. Even the rooms you don't use that often. Keep your thermostat set to the same temperature both during the day and at night.

As Berg told Dakota News Now, “Have heat in every room and not close any of the rooms off, you don’t know where the pipes are running in your walls and ceiling, therefore, to try and save heat by closing a bunch of rooms off is a ticket to disaster.”

If you plan on leaving your home for an extended period of time, shut off your water.

But if you plan on being home on these bitterly cold days, keep the water coming.

Berg's recommendation is, “Let your tap trickle all day with warm or even cold water and it’s not going to freeze, the same is true for toilets or any place there is standing water.”

Should a water pipe burst, you may have to deal with much more than just fixing the pipe. Oftentimes people need to call in a trained team of professionals like the ones at INTEK to lend a hand.

According to Meyerink, “It goes from really minor things just like a little bit of drywall and some wet carpet that we can take care of to entire basements that are flooded, 18-inches of water in the basement, a lot of things ruined, a lot of people’s contents and the things they value in their life can easily get destroyed."

That's why it's so very important to keep a keen eye on your home during these deep freeze days. Here's to hoping you won't need to make that dreaded call this winter weather season.

Source: Dakota News Now

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