5 January 2023
Because the Christmas cold snap within the Midlands, the ice across the side of this water container has melted, tank manage line has thawed. GILBERT, S. C. — Throughout Christmas weekend, frozen drinking water tower controls in Gilbert caused an unusual sight in Lexington County – frozen glaciers draped down the water container and all over trees plus a nearby field. Today, this particular water tower off of Peach Festival Road is back to normalcy. “We have a small manage line from the tank that will sends pressure to the settings that activate the penis pumps to fill the container. Being so cold plus colder than normal, though it was insulated, it stopped up. So that was providing a false indication the tank was empty or even lower and it was really full. So the pumps held pumping and what happened after that, it overflowed the container and even filled it a lot that it came out of the in-take on the top and it ran lower and that’s why it froze on the exterior, ” said Mark Forrester, manager of the Gilbert-Summit Countryside Water District. According to Forrester, they lost about twenty, 000 gallons over the Xmas holiday weekend, but there is no impact to clients. Forrester explains this manage line unthawed a few hours following the incident and the ice working down the side of the container didn’t melt until several days later. The sun, wind plus warmer temperatures helped with this effort. He tells Information 19 an on-call worker and supervisor stopped the particular overflow. Forrester was away from town at the time of the occurrence. Forrester adds that they already have had problems with controls misreading from time to time before. “It has an overflow that happens the side and that was stocked full, we’ve had that a couple of times, but never within the freezing conditions and glaciers formation like this, ” Forrester said. The Gilbert-Summit Non-urban Water District manager informs News 19 that this drinking water tower typically holds about 50 % a million gallons. He describes that there was no alter in charge for customers during this time.