Frozen Pipes near you

Which taps are affected tells you a lot. If one faucet runs dry while the rest of the house has water, the freeze is probably in the branch feeding it, often inside an outside wall. If nothing flows anywhere, suspect the water service or the pipe near the meter, especially where it comes through a cold foundation wall.

The water service is the buried pipe that carries water from the main under the street into the house. It is laid deep to stay below the frost, but a long cold spell with little snow cover, a shallow section or a line under a cleared driveway can still freeze. Responsibility is split along its length. In Toronto, the City owns the pipe from the watermain on the street to the property line, and the homeowner owns the part from the property line into the home.

If the house has no water in freezing weather and no indoor pipe you can reach seems to be the problem, call your municipality first: it can check whether the freeze is on its side and deal with it if so. A freeze on the private side is the owner's to fix, and thawing a buried line takes a plumber with dedicated thawing equipment, not heat applied from inside the basement. Some municipalities ask homes with a history of frozen services to keep a tap running during extreme cold; do it only when your municipality advises it.

Prevention comes down to keeping cold air off the pipes and heat around them. The City of Toronto's advice covers both: insulate the pipes most prone to freezing, especially near outside walls and in crawl spaces, the attic and the garage; keep every part of the house warm, especially near the water meter, even when you are away; and before winter, unscrew hoses, shut off the supply to outdoor taps and let them drain. For pipes at risk, Toronto also suggests running a pencil-thin stream of water to keep it moving, noting that the water used is billed.

A house that sits empty through the winter has two options: keep it heated and checked, or shut the water off and drain the system. Many home insurance policies set conditions for unoccupied homes, such as regular visits or the water being shut off and drained, so read yours before you close up.

Draining a system properly takes more than opening a few taps. A plumber shuts off and drains the water service, or the well pump and pressure tank, drains the water heater, opens every tap and low point, blows the remaining water out of the lines with compressed air, empties toilet tanks and bowls, and protects the traps with antifreeze made for plumbing. In spring, the same plumber can refill the system slowly and check every joint before the cottage is back in use.

Where a pipe can't be moved into heated space or insulated well enough, such as a supply line through a crawl space, a heat cable run along the pipe keeps it from freezing. It is an electrical product, so it has to be certified for the use and installed exactly as the manufacturer's instructions say: how it is fastened, whether insulation can go over it and what kind of outlet it needs.

Once the line is thawed, the plumber cuts out the split section and replaces it, then checks the rest of the run under pressure, since a pipe that froze may have more than one weak spot. If the same line freezes every winter, patching it again only resets the clock: the lasting fix is to reroute it through heated space, insulate and air-seal the cavity, or add heat cable where nothing else works.

Water from a burst pipe spreads quickly through ceilings, walls and floors. With the main valve closed and the pipe repaired, a water damage restoration company can extract the water, dry the structure and check for mould, and its moisture readings and photos help support an insurance claim.