In the aftermath of this week’s winter storm, San Antonio plumbers say they are overwhelmed with thousands of calls from desperate homeowners.
Most are reporting busted pipes and inundated floors. In the worst cases, their ceilings have partially collapsed.
“I’ve been in business in San Antonio for 26 years, and been through a lot of freezes, but I have never seen anything like this,” said Travis Chapman, owner of Big City Plumbing in Northeast San Antonio.
He said his midsize company, with six plumbers, has fielded several thousand calls for help since Monday.
And the backlog of repairs is likely to get much worse. As the foul weather clears out and temperatures climb, thawing, fractured pipes will spring leaks — or release gushers — as water pressure returns across San Antonio.
“I’ve been to million-dollar houses during the last few days that are just flooded because they had a water leak and they couldn’t get it shut off until I got there,” Chapman said.
His plumbers couldn’t make it to customers’ homes Monday or Tuesday because of the icy roads.
At Beyer Plumbing Co. in Selma, homeowners have been calling for help roughly every 30 seconds, said James Beyer, the company’s operations manager. Earlier this week, the volume was so heavy that Beyer and his office staff couldn’t make outgoing calls until they directed all the incoming ones to the company’s answering service.
One common problem: homeowners with cracked outdoor spigots. An uninsulated spigot can cause a lot of damage when it freezes and fractures because “the water’s coming into the people’s houses through the external wall,” Beyer said.
Tim Ackroyd, a Stone Oak homeowner, shut off his water to prevent interior flooding Sunday night after the pipe running to the outside spigot fractured. The software architect went without water until Friday afternoon.
That’s when Alex Ortega, a Beyer plumber, arrived and fixed the problem within an hour.
“We were very fortunate — we had stocked up on bottled water,” Ackroyd said. “Plus, we were gathering fresh snow and melting it to flush the toilet. It’s been like camping from inside the house.”
Ackroyd said he works from home and was fortunate that his electricity stayed on all week, allowing him to continue working on his computers.
Ortega said he wished he could have arrived sooner, but with the treacherous road conditions earlier in the week, he’d been able to service only about five customers a day.
As he spoke, his cellphone rang. Answering, he apologized to a longtime Alamo Heights customer who had no water at her swimming pool bathhouse. He said he would be out to help her in about a week.
“We have to give priority to people who have no water in their house,” he told her.
Beyer said some homeowners have grave problems, such as water line breaks above their kitchens or living rooms. He returned five calls Thursday to customers with collapsed ceilings.
“Every person you call is down and defeated and is ready for this to be over,” he said.
Beyer is worried about the next few days. Homeowners currently without running water may discover the hard way that they have damaged lines when the water begins flowing again.
“We are going to have another influx of calls,” he said.
Beyer’s company is one of the larger San Antonio-area plumbing businesses, with more than 50 plumbers and assistants. The company can’t keep up with the current crush of calls — and it’s expecting another wave as the weather warms.
“We have never seen so many calls for help,” said Allie Perez, head of marketing at George Plumbing Co. and an apprentice plumber. “It’s unprecedented — and we’re small. So as a family-owned and operated business, it’s all hands on deck.”
The North Central company’s six plumbers haven’t been able to respond to many of the hundreds of calls, Perez said. Road conditions most of the week made it too dangerous for house calls, she said.
Instead, the company’s plumbers tried to help callers over the phone, explaining how to turn off the water after a pipe burst.
“We’ve got little old ladies in their 80s and 90s, and when you tell them, ‘Shut off the water at the meter,’ they’re like, ‘Eh, I can’t do that,’” she said.
With San Antonio streets clearing fast, plumbers throughout the city plan to work through the weekend to catch up on the backlog of service calls.
On Thursday, James Felan Plumbing limited house calls to a small area near its office on Fredericksburg Road. The owner, James Felan, made one exception for a married couple who lived 20 miles from the office. The wife has stage 4 cancer.
A pipe in their attic burst, causing a flood. One of Felan’s plumbers braved the bad roads and replaced the pipe.
“They were our most important customer that day,” Felan said.
Most of the service calls are for cracked pipes.
“That’s our biggest thing,” Felan said. “Our goal right now is to restore water to as many homes as best we can.”
Major repairs, such as the installation of new pipes, usually take a full day. So Felan and his three plumbers plan to assess what they can do in a few hours to help as many homeowners as possible.
He said a temporary repair could involve capping a water pipe to stop the flow of water. That’ll usually do until the plumber has the time to make a permanent fix.
Big City’s Chapman said the damage is widespread, hitting every part of the city, because the freeze lasted for days, a rarity in San Antonio.
“It’s very seldom we have a really hard freeze,” he said. “No matter how much you wrap your pipes, when it’s freezing temperatures for four straight days, you’re bound to have problems.”
randy.diamond@express-news.net
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February 20, 2021 at 07:56AM
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‘I have never seen anything like this’: Plumbers receiving thousands of calls for help - San Antonio Express-News
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