Links to the breadcrumb trail
“It seems like every time you gain some momentum you’re blown away by something, between the new restrictions placed on you last week and now.”
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Kevin Warner, Assistant General Manager at the Unicorn Pub on Stephen Ave, Calgary, poses on Wednesday, December 29, 2021. A burst pipe at the popular pub during the recent cold snap forced the store to close. Photo by Jim Wells / Postmedia
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Santa Claus left a frozen lump of coal under the tree for several restaurants in Calgary this year.
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With most facilities closed over the holiday weekend, employees at a few restaurants returned to burst pipes and flooded businesses due to a cold snap that dropped temperatures near record highs for the season.
For Kevin Warner, Assistant General Manager at The Unicorn on 8th Avenue SW, this is just another blow to business.
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“It just seems like every time you gain some momentum, you knock something between the new restrictions you were given last week and now,” he told Postmedia on Wednesday. “It sucks.”
Management hoped The Unicorn would be back up and running by Tuesday, but one burst pipe turned into seven burst or cracked pipes. The insurance pays the repair costs, but the damage put the season at risk.
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The goal is now to have the top two levels of the three-tier establishment open on New Year’s Eve, which is accompanied by a muted celebration.
Due to a combination of burst pipe damage and health ordinances, many of the planned celebrations, including live music, had to be canceled.
A supplied photo shows damage and cleanup work at the Unicorn Pub on Stephen Ave SW in downtown Calgary. A pipe burst in the popular pub during the recent cold spell forced the store to close. Photo courtesy Kevin Warner
In addition, the Junior Hockey World Championship was canceled on Wednesday, while much of the Olympic Games draw failed because the NHL withdrew players from the tournament. These would have been big draws for The Unicorn’s sports bar.
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“December is usually very good with bookings and Christmas parties, but even that was far less than in the years before COVID,” he said. “January also tends to be one of our slowest months, so all income is urgently needed and breaks and interruptions don’t help at all.”
Several other restaurants and bars were also affected by the cold spell and had to close temporarily. This also includes Mugs Pub, which was able to reopen on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Native Tongues Taqueria revealed in a post on the restaurant’s Instagram account on Monday that water poured into the restaurant like torrential rain. When it will reopen is not yet known.
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The City of Calgary has received 70 water failure reports since Christmas morning and has requested a crew response to 42 of the calls. There had been eight previous water outages this fall and winter.
Chris Huston, manager of drinking water distribution for Water Services, said that doesn’t mean these are the only frozen pipes in Calgary. When a pipe bursts, they are usually not notified – often the call is direct to insurance, maintenance, or a contractor. But what they see is an indicator of the problem as a whole.
He said a number of factors contribute to pipes freezing in cold temperatures. For one thing, the water supply is currently between 1.5 and 5 ° C, and at these temperatures it doesn’t take much for them to freeze. Sometimes it’s as simple as a cold air recirculation directed at a point in the pipes, leaving a window open for fresh air, or cutting off a water pipe along an under-insulated wall or from a warmer air supply.
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“That air comes in really cold, and when there are pipes like near a sink or other piping in a building or house, those drafts can freeze a pipe pretty quickly,” said Huston.
The city has a number of tips on how to prevent pipes from freezing on their website, calgary.ca.
Huston found that frost levels also play a role. Most of Calgary’s aqueduct infrastructure is at least two and a half meters underground, although some older pipes are less than seven due to changing building codes, making them more prone to freezing.
Currently, frost levels in Calgary vary from four and a half to six feet, but that may change with longer subarctic weather periods. Before Christmas the frost levels were between a foot and a half deep.
During the extended freeze frost in 2019, frost levels hit 12 feet, causing widespread problems across the city.
Twitter: @ JoshAldrich03
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