You know it’s going to be a bad day when you wake up some cold winter morning with no water because your pipes are frozen.

Here are some things you can do to avoid that unhappy situation:

‡ Keep your basement adequately heated.

If your home has a crawl space, make sure it’s weather tight and heated enough to keep pipes from freezing when the weather gets really cold. If you’ve had trouble with frozen pipes in a crawl space, wrap them with heat tape covered with insulation.

Whatever else you do, don’t add to your problems by trying to thaw frozen pipes with a blow torch! You can thaw them quickly and safely with a hair dryer.

If you haven’t yet joined Pennies for Power, the beginning of the new year is a perfect time.

Pennies for Power rounds your monthly BWL utility bill to the next highest dollar each month, and donates the change to a fund that helps low income customers avoid utility shut-offs. It’s administered by Capital Area Community Services and provides one-time shut-off protection to families having trouble paying their utility bills.

Pennies for Power is an easy and painless way to lend a hand to folks in our community who need our help. You can sign up by clicking here for a printable form and mailing it with your utility payment.

With winter in full swing, snow and ice often cover our sidewalks and driveways.

This causes problems for BWL meter readers who are out doing their jobs regardless of the weather. You can help by keeping a cleared pathway to your electric and water meters.

That helps both you and us. For our meter readers, it means a safer work environment. And for you, it increases the likelihood that our employees will able to record your actual usage, so you won’t get a bill based on estimated consumption.

We appreciate your help.

This year we’ve taken the advice of many of our customers and noted your annual contribution to our program on this month’s bill rather than sending you a separate letter.

Each year we let our program participants know how much they contributed to Pennies for Power over the previous year so they can use that information in preparing their taxes. In past years we’ve done that by letter, but many of you properly chastised us for spending the extra postage, which sometimes matched or exceeded the annual contribution.

This year, if you contributed to Pennies for Power, you’ll find your annual statement on this month’s bill. Please note that if you have more than one utility account with us, Pennies for Power contributions will be noted separately on the billing statement for each account.

We hope this method of notification is convenient for you. Thanks for the suggestion.

We received word recently that the National Arbor Day Foundation has named us a Tree Line USA Utility in recognition of our leadership in caring for trees while meeting service objectives.

Trees make our communities more livable, increase property values, and help clean the air. Properly placed trees also help our customers conserve energy by providing shade in summertime. But trees improperly planted near power lines can lead to power outages and pose a serious safety hazard.

We’ve been recognized as a Tree Line USA Utility because of our efforts in training employees in quality tree-care practices and helping our customers plant appropriate trees near utility lines.

Tree Line USA is jointly sponsored by the National Arbor Day Foundation and the National Association of State Foresters. Click here for more about the BWL’s tree maintenance program.