Deep soil frost may not be only culprit for frozen pipes

Water lines in the Seeley Lake area have been freezing solid quite late this year, but it's not so much from a change in weather as it is from a change in the town's population.

Although the Seeley Lake soil has been known to freeze pipes from November to April, the last few years have been especially bad, and the culprit might not be as simple as the weather.

According to Vincent Chappell, the district manager for Montana Rural Water Systems (WRWS), the biggest problem affecting local water lines is a lack of use.

"A lot of our homes in different areas of town, especially Double Arrow subdivisions, have sold out to be summer homes," Chappell said.

"We had one particular line - two lines actually - that we had freeze off this year because there was only one person on each one of those lines using water. The other homes were summer homes. No one was there."

Seeley Lake, and the surrounding area, is now trending toward vacation homes which aren't occupied for much of the year - especially the coldest parts of the year. But while the resident may be taking a break, the infrastructure isn't.

"To keep the 1000 foot pipeline running with no one using water is almost impossible," Chappell said.

Pipes freeze slowly as the frozen ground around them turns the water inside to ice, but if the water inside the pipe stays in motion, then it's less likely to freeze. This is why leaving a faucet on a steady trickle will prevent pipes from freezing.

This trick still works for single households, but water lines that service multiple homes need more steady use to keep from freezing and some of the local water lines just aren't seeing enough.

"It's just been a gradual progression of all the summer homes coming in," Chappell said. "People not being here during wintertime [is] compromising more of the pipelines."

If one home on a water line is in use year-round, that one home will more than likely not pull enough water to prevent a freeze and subsequently could be without water.

In 2019, the MRWS installed a flush pump on a 3,000 foot water line which only had around 10 users for the winter season. The flush pump kept water moving through the line by expelling it every six hours throughout the day, but while that did keep the line from freezing it also created a stream of wasted water. It was estimated at almost one thousand gallons every six hours.

"It was a huge expense to put that in," Chappell said. "But that was the only thing we could do."

"The problem is we have so many dead-end lines where people aren't using water," Chappell said. "It would be a phenomenal expense for us to try to put stations on every water line."

Without expensive and wasteful flush pumps, they are forced to continue this regiment of digging out and thawing frozen lines, which is also a difficult and expensive process.

"That frost is almost like digging solid concrete," Chappell said. "It's extremely hard. Hard on equipment too."

Efforts to thaw the pipes without digging them have so far been unsuccessful, and while the MRWS is still searching for new solutions, there doesn't seem to be any easy answers.

"We wound up going back to digging with an excavator and cutting the main lines apart and thawing the ice from the inside out and then putting everything back together, rebuilding and getting the water back to the people," Chappell said. "Typically once we start digging, we'll have everybody back in service within a couple of days."

With housing continuing to trend toward seasonal occupation, it seems that the problem will get worse over time. But MRWS is looking for ways to keep the pipes from freezing so residents don't lose water during the cold months.

"We're going to try to find a way to address the situation before next winter," Chappell said.