Frozen Pipes in Kamloops: How to Prevent Them and What to Do If It Happens

Every January and February we get a wave of frozen-pipe calls in Kamloops. Most of them are preventable. The few that turn into burst pipes flooding a basement are the expensive ones. Here is everything you need to know about keeping your pipes safe through a Kamloops cold snap, and what to do if you wake up to no water in the morning.

Why pipes freeze in Kamloops homes

Water expands by about 9 percent when it freezes. Inside a sealed pipe, that expansion creates pressure that the pipe wall cannot handle, and copper or PEX or galvanized eventually splits open. The split is usually small, but when the ice thaws and water starts flowing again, that split becomes a leak that does not stop.

The freeze itself happens at the coldest spot in the run, which is almost never inside the heated part of your house. It is in crawl spaces, exterior walls without enough insulation, attached garages, and anywhere a pipe runs near a vent or air gap to the outside. Cold air finds the pipe; pipe loses heat faster than the warm water can replace it; pipe freezes.

The ten-minute prevention checklist

Before the temperature drops below minus ten, walk through the house and do these five things. Better still, run the pre-freeze fall walk a month earlier so you are not racing the forecast.

One: open the cabinet doors under any sink that sits against an exterior wall. Warm air from the room reaches the pipes underneath. Bathroom and kitchen sinks are the usual suspects.

Two: disconnect garden hoses and shut off the indoor valve to outdoor faucets. Drain the outdoor faucet by opening it briefly. Water trapped in a hose bib is the single most common burst point.

Three: insulate any pipes you can see in unheated areas. Foam sleeves from any hardware store, three dollars each, slip on in seconds.

Four: locate and test your main water shutoff valve. If a pipe bursts you have minutes, not hours, to find it.

Five: if you are leaving for vacation in winter, leave the heat set no lower than 13 degrees Celsius. Turning the heat off entirely while the house freezes is how single-week vacations turn into ten-thousand-dollar repair bills.

What to do during a cold snap

When the forecast shows multiple nights below minus fifteen, take it more seriously. Open one cold-water tap on the coldest side of the house and let it drip slowly overnight. Moving water freezes much slower than still water, and the steady drip relieves any pressure that builds up if a section does start to freeze.

Keep all interior doors open so heat circulates evenly. If you have a known cold spot (a closet on an exterior wall, a back bathroom that runs cool), put a small space heater in there overnight. Five dollars on the power bill beats a flooded bedroom.

If you wake up to no water

First, check the rest of the house. If only one fixture has no water, the freeze is local to that pipe. If the whole house is dry, the freeze is at or near the main line where it enters the house.

Find the frozen section. Run your hand along the pipe (carefully, it will be very cold). Look for the spot that feels coldest or has visible frost on the outside. Open the faucet that the pipe feeds so melted water has somewhere to go.

Apply heat to the frozen section with a hair dryer or heat tape, starting at the faucet end and working back toward the freeze. Never use an open flame. A propane torch will catch the wall on fire faster than you can put it out, and people have lost their houses doing this. Hair dryer only.

If you cannot find the freeze, or the pipe has already burst (you will hear water running but no water coming out of a tap), shut off the main valve immediately and call us. The longer the water runs into the wall the worse the damage gets.

When to call a plumber and not try to handle it yourself

Call us right away if any of these are true: water is actively leaking out of a pipe, the freeze is in a wall you cannot access, the freeze is in the main service line under the house, your hot water heater is involved, or you have already tried to thaw it for an hour with no luck.

We have professional pipe-thawing equipment that traces the freeze and applies controlled heat without damaging the pipe. We also know which sections to check after a thaw to make sure there is no hidden split that will leak the next time the system pressurizes. The spring walk-through covers the seven checks worth running once Kamloops is fully out of freeze risk.