Burst & Frozen Pipe Repair in Rhode Island

If a pipe has burst: do this first, then call

• Shut the main water valve. It is usually where the water line enters the house, on the basement wall facing the street. Everyone in the house should know where it is before this happens.
• Open the faucets to drain the pressure off the system and slow the flow from the break.
• Kill the power to any area where water is near outlets, the panel or appliances.
• Call. A person answers at any hour, tells you what else to shut off, and dispatches the nearest van.

If a pipe is frozen but has not burst yet

You have a window, and what you do in it matters. Open the faucet the frozen line feeds, so melting water has somewhere to go and pressure does not build behind the ice. Warm the room, open cabinet doors, and warm the pipe itself gently from the faucet end back toward the freeze with a hair dryer or a heating pad. Never use a torch or open flame; it splits pipe, starts fires, and is how a frozen pipe becomes a burst one with a fire on top. If you cannot reach the frozen section, or it is behind a wall, call before it thaws on its own, because the split usually shows itself when the ice lets go.

Where Rhode Island pipes freeze

Almost always the same places, which is why the fix is usually permanent once it is done properly:

• Pipes in outside walls, especially kitchen and bathroom supply lines behind cabinets
• Crawlspaces and unheated basements, common in cottages and older ranches
• Garages and additions where a bathroom or laundry was added to a space never meant to hold plumbing
• Hose bibs with a hose left connected, which traps water in the pipe inside the wall
• Seasonal homes left unheated or heated too low, from the South County shore to the lake cottages up north
• Condensate lines on high-efficiency boilers that drain outside and freeze shut
• Any house whose heat has failed, which is why a no-heat call is also a frozen-pipe call waiting to happen

The repair

A burst is a split, and the split section comes out and is replaced. On copper that is a cut and a new section; on older galvanized it is often a section replaced in copper or PEX; on PEX it is a new run with new fittings. One freeze frequently produces several splits along the same line, so we check the whole frozen run rather than fixing the one that is spraying and leaving the next one to open up tomorrow. Then the system is pressurized and tested before we leave.

After the water

You get photographs of the failure and the repair and, when insurance is involved, a written cause-of-loss report in the format adjusters expect. Frozen and burst pipe claims are among the most common winter claims in the state, and good paperwork is the difference between a smooth one and an argument.

Making sure it is the last time

Every burst pipe repair ends with a conversation about why it froze, because the repair is only half the job. Insulating the run, adding heat trace to a pipe that cannot be moved, rerouting a line out of an outside wall, sealing the draft that was reaching it, disconnecting hoses and fitting frost-free hose bibs, and keeping heat on in an empty house are all cheaper than the second repair. For seasonal homes, a proper winterization, fully drained with traps protected, is the only reliable answer.