I work in fire suppression, just crazy what we are seeing. Pipes are freezing in businesses, then breaking apart and falling through ceilings, distribution centers, aircraft hangers, fuel terminals, warehouses, apartments, schools, and it hasn’t even thawed out yet. One of our customers has 30 plus sprinkler systems, they have damage to every system and have requested at least 8 men on Friday to start. It will take at least a year to get back to normal for us.

An apartment complex near campus just had this happen yesterday. The kids are freaking out. Nasty water coming out of those pipes. Lots of damage.

I know, I work in fire suppression too. same craziness here, phone has not stopped ringing since Monday freeze breaks everywhere.

Unprecedented low temps, hope to never see that again in my life

I have a facility in Dallas that I am extremely worried about the fire sprinkler system. I know we have had rolling blackouts down there, I pray those pipes don't bust.

Can you change them over to dry systems? We could only use dry in colorado for just this reason.

My pool had a catastrophic failure. Filter is in multiple pieces now. I drained the pump system prior to this due to a priming issue. After draining, I put the plugs back in, which shouldn't have been an issue. My control system did a hard reboot from the power outrages and brought my pump on which pulled enough water into the filter to totally screw up everything. Probably lost the pump also.

Once you design the system you make that decision up front, things for dry systems require larger pipes, smaller systems, so it’s not just a flip of the switch, we are even seeing dry system freeze ups in the riser room because there is water up to the dry pipe valve. It’s even breaking the underground pipes as it rises up into the building. The riser room is always supposed to be heated. Most people put electric heat in them.

It’s going to get worse. When they thaw more.

"Learn to plumb" may be a new meme.

The insurance companies are going to take a big hit, as this is a state wide catastrophe.

Insurance companies don't take hits. Any losses will be passed on to the consumer via increased rates.

We have a large air handling system supplied by 2 boilers. We can’t get below 80 due to our manufacturing process. We also have a fire sprinkler, it’s a 200k square foot building. I’m hoping we made it with minimal damage, as we haven’t lost power there yet.

Not so sure that is correct. They will take a huge hit. Most will have re-insurance of some sort but even they will be hit very hard. Yes, rates will increase because of it to the extent that they can and still be competitive. We are quick to blame the utility companies when we except no responsibility for building houses that have a low tolerance for once in 25 year events.

You are a contrarian through and through.