Frozen Pipes in Winnipeg: Thawing Safely, What the City Does and What a Plumber Charges For

Where is the freeze?

Open a tap on each floor. If nothing runs anywhere, including the outside hose bib in the basement, the freeze is likely in the water service between the street and the house, or at the point it enters the foundation. If some taps run and one does not, the freeze is inside, usually in a pipe on an exterior wall, in a crawlspace, or behind a kitchen cabinet on a north wall. Feel along the exposed pipe for the coldest section and look for frost.

Winnipeg’s older neighbourhoods, from Wolseley to the North End, have shallower and older services and freeze first. If your neighbours have lost water too, the frost has reached the main and the City is the first call.

What the City does and what it does not

The City of Winnipeg tracks frost depth through the winter and sends notices to properties at risk of a frozen service, asking them to run a cold tap continuously at a pencil-width stream and adjusting the water bill for the extra use. If a service does freeze, the City thaws the section it owns, from the main to the property line, and can in some cases supply a temporary above-ground line from a neighbour’s house until the thaw. Call 311 to report a frozen service; the queue is long in a bad winter, and the City works through it in order.

The section from the property line into the house is the owner’s. If the City thaws its side and water still does not flow, the freeze is on yours, and a plumber with thawing equipment is the next step. Ask 311 to confirm the City’s side is clear before paying a plumber to look.

Thawing without starting a fire or bursting a pipe

Plumbers thaw metal water services with electric thawing machines that pass a low-voltage current through the pipe, and plastic services with warm water pumped through a small line fed into the frozen section. Both need experience: the wrong current on the wrong pipe has started house fires, and heating a frozen pipe from the wrong end traps expanding water and bursts it. Never use a torch. Inside the house, a hair dryer or heat lamp on the coldest exposed section, with the tap open so meltwater can escape, is safe; a space heater in a crawlspace is not something to leave unattended.

Open the tap before you start and leave it open while thawing. Once water flows, let it run for a few minutes and check every joint along the thawed section for drips; a pipe that froze once often has a split that only shows under pressure.

• Tap open at the frozen fixture before thawing
• Water shutoff location known and working
• No open flame, ever
• Plumber’s thawing method matched to the pipe material
• Joints checked for leaks after flow returns

Insurance, prevention and Manitoba Hydro

Burst-pipe damage is usually covered by a Manitoba home policy, but frozen-pipe claims can be denied if the house was left unheated or unattended beyond the policy’s limit without the water shut off. If you travel in winter, shut the main and drain the system or have someone check the house. Photograph any damage before cleanup.

Prevention is cheaper than thawing: insulate the pipe where it enters the foundation, seal drafts around the sill plate, keep cabinet doors open on north walls in a cold snap, and heat-trace pipes in crawlspaces with a listed heating cable on its own protected circuit. If the electric heat tracing or a space heater trips breakers in an old panel, that is an electrician’s job under Manitoba’s inspection rules, not a plumber’s.