GILBERT, S.C. — During Christmas weekend, frozen water tower controls in Gilbert caused an unusual sight in Lexington County - frozen ice draped down the water tank and all over trees and a nearby field.
Today, this water tower off of Peach Festival Road is back to normal.
"We have a small control line from the tank that sends pressure to the controls that activate the pumps to fill the tank. Being so cold and colder than normal, even though it was insulated, it froze up. So that was giving a false indication that the tank was empty or lower and it was actually full. So the pumps kept pumping and what happened then, it overflowed the tank and even filled it so much that it came out of the vent on the top and it ran down and that's why it froze on the outside," said Mark Forrester, manager of the Gilbert-Summit Rural Water District.
According to Forrester, they lost about 20,000 gallons over the Christmas holiday weekend, but there was no impact to customers.
Forrester explains this control line unthawed a few hours after the incident and the ice running down the side of the tank didn't melt until a few days later. The sun, wind and warmer temperatures helped in this effort.
He tells News 19 an on-call employee and supervisor stopped the overflow. Forrester was out of town at the time of the incident. Forrester adds that they've had problems with controls misreading from time to time before.
"It does have an overflow that comes out the side and that was overflowing, we've had that a few times, but never in the freezing conditions and ice formation like this," Forrester said.
The Gilbert-Summit Rural Water District manager tells News 19 that this water tower typically holds about half a million gallons. He explains that there was no change in charge for customers during this time.