Frank Eskridge doesn’t really like cold weather. Not only does it mean bundling up and fighting the stinging chill, it also means a lot more work for he and his crew at Athens Utilities.

Eskridge, the manager of water services for Athens Utilities, said the extended freezing temperatures the area has seen this week have led to plenty of burst and leaking water pipes.

“We normally have a handful of water mains in our distribution system in any given month break for any given reason,” Eskridge said. “We’ve had about a month’s worth of work in the last few days. We’ve also been getting a lot of calls where a customer’s water service line is leaking. We’ll assist them by turning off the water at the meter.”

When a water main breaks in freezing temperatures, it causes more problems than just the inconvenience of a water main rupture.

“This time of year, it creates a safety hazard, because the escaping water freezes and you end up with ice on the roads or the sidewalks,” Eskridge said. “The crews have to respond to a lot more problems and do it more quickly because of that.”

Eskridge said Athens Utilities crews will do their best to clear the ice off the road or sidewalk when they are repairing a water leak.

“Most of the time, if we’re responding to a main break, and we’re out there with backhoes and dump trucks, we can scrape the ice with the bucket of the backhoe,” he said. “If we can’t do anything else, we can put sand on it to create a situation where there will be some traction.”

But Eskridge said the goal is to get to a main break before the water freezes, meaning crews are working through the night, which can lead to some uncomfortable and even dangerous situations.

“This is the time of year we’re dealing with,” he said. “The crews have been doing a wonderful job under very difficult conditions.”

To combat some of those conditions, workers take extra precautions. Eskridge said workers often keep a service truck running onsite. That way, workers have a warm, dry cab to enter at any time.

“You don’t have to get wet in this weather very long before you get frostbite, and that’s something we’re not wanting to have happen,” he said.

Limestone County Water and Sewer Authority CEO Daryl Williamson said his department has only responded to two water main breaks, one at Upper Fort Hampton Road near Elkmont and the other at Tillman Mill.

“We’ve fared pretty well,” Williamson said. “We’ve had a few customers call in with frozen service lines, but most of those have been on the customer’s side of the meter.”

Williamson said the authority will go to a customer’s residence to see what the problem is if called.

“We’ll go out and check to make sure the meter is not frozen up,” he said. “If that happens, you take a hair dryer or heat gun to see if you can thaw it out. If it’s the service line, it could be the service line is too shallow. We’ve had people who have left their hose pipes attached to the faucets and the service line has frozen up.”

Both Eskridge and Williamson said there are a variety of things people can do to help protect their pipes from freezing.

If a house has a crawl space where the plumbing is located, make sure the vents to the crawl space are closed to help prevent the cold air from getting under the house and affecting the water lines.

“Even if all you can do is take a piece of cardboard or styrofoam and put that in the (vent) opening of the crawl space, that will help,” Eskridge said. “If those openings are unobstructed, the cold air circulates, and if it’s 15 degrees outside, it will be 15 degrees under your house. If you can block (the cold air) off, then there’s a chance the heat from the home can keep the air under the house warmer and keep the pipes from freezing.”

Other tips include opening the cabinets under sinks, letting water slowly drip from indoor faucets and disconnecting hose pipes from outdoor faucets.

“This kind of weather is something we don’t see that often for this long of a time,” Williamson said. “Typically, you’d see this and then it would thaw back out, but we haven’t had the thawing back out yet.”