Burst pipes lead to innovative solutions after historic snowstorm

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – During this historic snowstorm, you’ve probably heard this a few times.

”I mean look, we’re south Louisiana, this stuff never happens,” Johnathan Courtney with Southern Air, Cooling and Heating said.

Once we got above that sweet spot — 32 degrees Fahrenheit, that’s when the calls started to roll in for crews all over the area.

”A lot of times what will happen is it will freeze, and you’ll have no idea that nothing’s wrong, and then when it starts to thaw, that’s when you start seeing water and that’s when they start to burst,” Courtney said.

Water leaks weren’t the only thing on Southern Air’s agenda today.

”Pipes bursting, a lot of toilet clogs,” Courtney said. “There have been some issues with apartment complexes and a lot of electrical issues as well so it’s been a mixed bag.” our first stop today, was one of those out-of-the-blue calls — where the home’s heating system was causing some lights to flicker around the house. We climbed up in the attic to check it out.

”It really could be just an electrical issue, a weak break or something like that but I am just going through everything to make sure it’s nothing internally,” Southern Air technician Josh Bye said.

It looks like we found our culprit.

”So, if you look here, the furnace is plugged into a surge protector that looks very old and damaged,” Bye said.

Weather-related or not, Southern Air told us they are waiving their service fee during this week but some folks just down the street are making repairs on their own — like Mark West.

His water pipes near his pool broke overnight.

”So yesterday I went out and went to Home Depot, picked up all the supplies I needed,” West said. “Needed a new pipe, a coupler, a cap for that and then wrapped it. And I put a heat lamp on it to make triple sure.”

Mark took us to his backyard to show off his work.

”Got a little camera too to see if it worked or not.”

His craftmanship is on full display.

”This was the pipe here, it’s a PVC pipe, it comes up and has a faucet on it and it just burst between the ground and the faucet and was going everywhere,” West said.

Whether you called Southern Air, or DIY it like Mark, there’s one thing everyone can agree on.

”My friend’s grandfather, who is 87 says he has never seen it and he has lived here his whole life,” West said.”

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