With a backlog of service calls, water well contractors in Texas have been working overtime to get wells back online for their customers following the February winter storm.
The rare storm brought freezing temperatures from February 13-17 and wreaked havoc on the state’s electrical grid, resulting in millions of Texans without power and nearly 15 million with water issues, according to the Texas Tribune. The power outages caused aboveground private well pressure tanks and piping to freeze or burst (even insulated pipe) across the state.
In Huntsville, Texas, about 70 miles north of Houston, William McPike, pictured here, and area contractors shared parts such as control boxes, popoff valves, air volume controls, and even pumps, as well as labor, to help each other complete their service calls.
McPike spoke with area contractors daily as his company had 40-50 water well service calls in his 60-mile work radius. Other area contractors faced 100-150 service calls.
“In the water well world, we need to stay close together. We don’t need to compete against one another. That’s just not the way I see it,” McPike, owner/president of Geothermal Drilling Inc./McPike Water Wells, said during the first week of March. “We need to work together, not talk about each other.”
McPike, the incoming president of the Texas Ground Water Association, said his two service crews were able to complete calls the same day while others took four days to two weeks because of delays in getting parts to fix the systems. He had 20 geothermal service calls (commercial and residential) and had completed nearly all of them by the end of the first week in March.
If McPike needed to open a well, he chlorinated it. McPike instructed his customers to watch for a few days to make sure there weren’t any leaks in their lines or other problems. If there were leaks in the lines, McPike fixed the leaks and then reinsulated the lines. If there were no leaks, the lines can be reinsulated. The owner can reinsulate the lines as well.
McPike, who serves all of Texas for geothermal, is also talking with two water companies about installing variable frequency drives on booster pumps to prevent city water shutoffs in the future.
A native of Huntsville, McPike has learned from this weather event to take it seriously and purchase additional stock parts prior to any future weather events.
— by Mike Price