Hello St. Mary's Community Members,

Although the worst of the freeze has passed, we still recommend that you keep faucets trickling to prevent freezes. It looks like the coldest nights will persist through the weekend.

Here are a few other steps you can take to prevent your indoor plumbing from freezing:

• Keep your heat at or above 55ºF. Keep your thermometer on or your fire stoked, and seal any doors, windows, and holes in the wall that could let in drafts.
• Open kitchen and bathroom cabinets to allow heat to reach the plumbing. If these rooms tend to be cold, add space heaters to warm them up.
• Insulate accessible plumbing that has a higher likelihood of freezing, such as pipes in the exterior walls of the house or those have frozen in the past. If you don't have any insulation on hand, towels, blankets, and balled up paper can make great substitutes. However, ensure that these flammable materials are not near any other sources of heat (i.e. furnaces, fireplaces, etc.) that could cause them to ignite.
• Disconnect all exterior water connections and hoses.
• Keep at least one faucet in your house trickling. Moving water is less likely to freeze. Additionally, ensure that your drains are properly cleared to prevent backups/flooding.

Hopefully these steps will help keep your homes and the mountain's water system from freezing during these cold spells. If you have any questions or suspect a freeze please reach out to us at 720.722.3692 or smgwsd.operations@gmail.com. Thank you all.

-St. Mary's Glacier Water and Sanitation District