Unusual frozen gas line leaves homeowner with no furnace for 19 hours

Sep 16, 2023

Jim Whitlock’s house in the 300 block of Belgrade Avenue in North Mankato is being supplied natural gas via a temporary trailer after frozen gas lines left him without heat. His was the only house affected.

NORTH MANKATO — A decades-old electric range in Jim Whitlock’s basement was a dependable old friend when a freak event left the home without gas or heat late last week.

At 3:30 a.m. Thursday Whitlock’s cat jumped on this bed and climbed onto his chest. “I woke up and said, ‘Geez it’s cold in here.’”

The thermostat read 62 degrees and the furnace wasn’t running.

Whitlock called Paul Herding of Herding Heating who arrived at 7:30 to tell Whitlock it wasn’t his furnace but a lack of natural gas coming into the home.

A CenterPoint Energy crew arrived at 8:30 a.m. and discovered a section of gas line connected to the gas main across Belgrade Avenue was frozen.

While CenterPoint was tracking down a natural gas trailer to hook up to the house, the temps in the house kept falling during the below-zero temperatures outside.

With a gas range in the kitchen being no solution, Whitlock went down the basement and turned on the ovens on the old double-oven.

“It’s a Frigidaire electric stove I bought from a guy 40 years ago for $35.”

He opened both oven doors and settled in front of them for the day, a couple of small fans set up to disperse heat in the basement.

“I kept it 50 in the basement, but it dropped to 39 degrees upstairs.”

Jim Whitlock, a North Mankato resident and city councilman, lost gas service to his home during the cold snap because of a frozen gas line.

Whitlock, who serves on the City Council, said he used the hours in front of the range catching up on some paperwork.

“I worked on taxes and some stuff. I did everything to keep my mind off things.”

By 8:30 p.m. — 19 hours after the heat went out — CenterPoint had a temporary trailer with a tank of natural gas connected to the home to get the furnace running.

“I got to hand it to CenterPoint. They had to bring a tank from the Cities and bring down a guy who was certified to hook it up.”

CenterPoint crews put heating mats outside on the ground above the frozen pipe section with hopes of being able to dig down Monday to make repairs. But with the ground still too frozen, they added more heat mats Monday morning with hopes of doing the repairs Tuesday or Wednesday.

Whitlock and Herding said the frozen underground pipe was likely caused by work that crews did on gas lines last summer.

“I’ve never seen frozen pipes underground before,” Herding said. “I see it above ground where the regulators get clogged and you have to bang on them and get them open, but I never saw this before.”

He said gas crews last summer were installing plastic sleeves inside the existing gas lines.

“We had a lot of rain and I’m guessing some water got inside those pipes when they were working on them, and when it got so cold, they froze,” Herding said.

Whitlock’s is the only property that has been affected.

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.