Queenstown under a freeze

Press, 8 July 1982, Page 2

Queenstown under a freeze

PA - Dunedin At least 50 houses in Queenstown have been without water as prolonged frosts have frozen supply lines and storage tanks. Frosts over the last three weeks have had a disastrous effect on the town’s water supply and on Monday all three schools in Queenstown had problems with burst pipes or frozen plumbing. Plumbers have reported a deluge of calls to repair burst or blocked pipes, one reporting up to 50 calls on Monday alone. The freezing has caused unusual situations for plumbers. In one case, advice was given to leave a tap running to prevent taps freezing, but someone overlooked the rather narrowwaste pipe of the sink. The sink overflowed through the house when the owner was away and the water froze.

When the house was opened, it was necessary to shovel ice out of it. In another house a freezing pipe blasted a tap halfway across a laundry, and in a third a tap was split in half when it froze.

Not only cold-water supplies have suffered. In several houses plastic hot-water pipes have also burst.

Ice has formed in the headwaters of the Shotover River and has been drifting downstream, playing havoc with commercial jet boat services.