From Boston Globe reporters Travis Andersen and Jessica Bartlett:

The brutally cold weather that descended on the region last weekend caused pipes to burst at scores of homes and public venues, setting off a scramble for plumbing and repair help.

“I don’t have any hot water, but I do have very cold water,” said Keira Driscoll, 34, of Watertown, describing the bleak situation Monday inside her condo after hot water pipes burst in her bathroom over the weekend.

Some water, Drsicoll said, was even “coming forward into my kitchen.”

The water was shut off and when she called her maintenance contractor Sunday morning he said her property was the 19th address on the street having problems.

“It’s looking like Tuesday of next week,” before workers can clean up the damage, she said. “And then I’m probably going to have to have my ceiling torn down. The wood floors got a ton of water [damage] underneath, so it looks like those might be coming up too.”

The cold front brought extreme temperatures and wind chills as low as 30 degrees below zero in Boston, forecasters said, freezing pipes across the region.

Carl Jonasson, owner of C.H. Jonasson Corp., a Needham-based plumbing, heating, and air conditioning contractor, said he’s prioritizing regular customers, who can probably get a repair scheduled within a couple of days. Everyone else should prepare to wait.

“For non-regular customers, it could be a week or two,” Jonasson said Monday. “Most plumbers aren’t even picking up the phone now.”

In Haverhill, firefighters were called Monday to a condominium complex on Casablanca Street, where they cleaned up water damage from a unit whose owner was out of town, said Jennifer Piazza, a resident of the complex.

The same thing had happened earlier at another unit, she said.

“It looked like they kind of just tried to contain the water,” Piazza said of firefighters who arrived Monday.

Among the businesses that sustained water damage was the restaurant Little Donkey, located in Cambridge’s Central Square.

On Saturday, chef and co-owner Jamie Bissonnette posted a video clip of water gushing from a leak in the restaurant’s ceiling and wrote that the restaurant would be “closed for maintenance.

On Monday, Bissonnette said the restaurant would reopen Monday evening after crews worked through the weekend to fix the leak.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” Bissonnette said.

Read more of the story — with no paywall: https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/02/07/most-plumbers-arent-even-picking-up-the-phone-now-burst-pipes-cause-backlog-after-boston-deep-freeze/

My house is 118 years old with poor insulation. I left all of my faucets running moderately Friday and Saturday. I would rather pay a higher water bill than pay to fix burst pipes. I also kept the door from my kitchen to my basement open and ran a space heater (only when I could keep an eye on it) pointing down to the basement to help keep it warmer.

Time to get proactive and install insulation

Don't have the funds - we do what we can over the years

Mass Save subsides this if you qualify.

Gosh, I bet that never occurred to OP! /s

[deleted]

For anyone who has a burst pipe, go get some Sharkbite fittings, some pex tubing, a pipe cutter, a cheap pex tool and a file and there's a good chance you can fix the problem yourself.

You might want to treat the result as a temporary repair but it's not difficult. DM me and I'll walk you through it.

Flex Seal💪

Wha? They put insulation in the walls of my 1890 condo no problem

Buddy of mine received almost 50 calls between Friday night and Sunday morning being on the 2nd page of Google

We had Mass Saves put insulation in our 1870 house.

We got upgrades in our 1880s condo as well

My house is from 1780, with an addition from 1910, and MassSave put in insulation and weatherstripping.

My plumber picks up the phone and has availability if anybody is interested.

The photo featured in the article is the place my wife works. They had all the faucets dripping and heat blasting and three pipes still froze. Water went everywhere, and now walls and flooring will have to be ripped out. Tons of damage for a small nonprofit to absorb.

May I ask how many units your condo building is? When I looked at MassSave it says they won't do the reduced pricing stuff for residential condos with more than 4 units

I had a pipe freeze and burst. Luckily the 3rd place I called said they would be there within 4 hours. They were 30 minutes late, but got me set for the night at least. A radiator pipe is what froze. They capped it off on each side and called it a night. It left me without heat in that zone. They will be back later this week to actually fix the pipe since it was solid with ice at the time. Total cost will be around $1500 with zero damage to the house. It sucks, but could have been much worse.

Six. Weird, didn't have an issue before. Maybe they changed the rules

[deleted]

[deleted]

[deleted]

[deleted]

What are you talking about? Sharkbite fittings work with copper and pex. They're a great way to transition from one to the other.

Pex isn't PVC.

Just the plumbers with many trucks and established marketing - plenty of small time plumbers with availability.

We don't qualify

[deleted]

They work with copper and pex. CPVC is what's used for potable water but I don't have any experience with that. OD on pex and copper is the same but I believe CPVC is different, so probably doesn't work there.

Most of my house is copper but one section is pex and the transition was done with Sharkbites almost 10 years ago. It's still fine.

1920 house. Shower plumbing is in the outside wall. We have torn out the wall previously and installed PEX and insulation. Installed a shut off and drain for the water. There is a radiator pretty close to the shower. Kept fan going to move heat into the room. *we've tried the "water dripping" thing in the past. It led to the first of the burst pipes.

DIDN'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Sunday morning. I go to turn the water on. Husband comes downstairs. We are standing there trying to decide what to do for breakfast, and then... you can hear the water hitting the back of the tub. I run down to the basement and shut the water back off. Water is pouring into the basement. Breakfast was as relaxed as it could be. Then we got to pulling the tub away from the wall. Copper pipe, even with the insulation in the wall, split.

So in June we are taking the tub out, and installing a shower. And we are flipping it around so that the freaking plumbing is not in an outside wall.

My mom's place is early 1800's and they came out.

With 4 or more units I believe they need to work with your property manager to get the entire building looked at, not just your unit. I ran into the exact same issue but my PM is currently in the process of figuring out how this works after I gave them the contacts. Will try to update you when we hear back, if I remember. No telling how long this will take ha!

Was it baseboard radiators? One of mine burst over Christmas, and my plumber mentioned how thin that copper is. Always busts first, he recommended I turn the heat up so it circulated more often and that worked well this time arouns

Plumbing is not a hard skill to learn. You can DIY if you invest a little time learning some stuff.

Yes it was a baseboard radiator. It was completely our fault. We run our wood stove whenever we are home. So Friday night-Saturday I was running the stove. The pipe that burst was on the other side of the house from the wood stove. The room the wood stove was in was 75 or so, but the heat doesn't make it to that room. Basically I was attempting to save $10 or whatever in oil and ended up costing myself $1500 in repairs. Next time it gets that cold I'm just going to let the oil run.

Also, Mass Saves is riddled with fraud and overcharging.