This article is from page 14 of the 2010-01-12 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 14 JPG
A SENIOR Clare County Councillor has said lessons must be learnt and new building practice put in place if water shortages and burst pipes are to be avoided during similar weather in the future.
Cllr PJ Kelly (FF) said that the spo- radic bursting of underground water pipes connecting the mains to homes across the county during the freezing weather conditions was due in large
part to a lack of regulation in pipe laying.
He went on to say that while the location the pipes are positioned in is a condition of planning permis- sions, how deep those pipes are set is not.
The building regulations then con- tend with the structure of the house and not what is underground.
“We have to have better practice of best practice when supplying domes- tic water to homes,” he said.
“TWe need] Better insulation and for pipes to be laid in a certain way so they are adverse to these traitor- ous conditions,’ he said.
“A thing is only a mistake when you fail to learn from it. There are going to have to be new codes of practice in this area.”
Senior Executive Engineer with the Water Section of Clare County Council, Sean Ward said that under- ground pipes in numerous houses across the county had been frozen in
the past week.
In the same housing estates, the pipes in some houses froze com- pletely while the water in neighbour- ing houses flowed freely.
He said that issues such as insula- tion and the depth of pipes could have contributed to these differences in circumstances.
Burst pipes and people letting taps run all night to avoid pipes freezing has also increased the water usage in the county by 10 to 20 per cent.