Frozen pipes in Cheyenne: prevention, and what to do if one bursts

Cheyenne gets the kind of cold that finds the weak spot in a house. January averages a low of about 14°F, and the hard nights run well below zero. The problem is rarely the deep cold on its own. It is how fast it arrives.

During the December 2022 arctic front, the National Weather Service office in Cheyenne recorded a one-hour temperature drop of 47.1°F just south of the city. A pipe that was fine at lunchtime can be frozen by the evening, and nobody in the house notices until a tap runs dry.

It is worth taking seriously because of what it costs. A State Farm representative told a local radio station that frozen and burst pipes account for the highest claimed insured losses in Wyoming. Not wind. Not hail. Pipes.

Which pipes freeze first

Water freezes where the heat does not reach. In a Cheyenne house that means the same handful of places, every winter:

• Outdoor spigots and the line behind them. The most common failure of all, and the easiest to prevent.
• Crawl spaces. Vented to the outside, often with thin or missing insulation on the pipe runs.
• Unheated basements and garages. Especially where a supply line runs along an exterior wall.
• Inside exterior walls. Kitchen and bathroom plumbing on an outside wall sits between the cold and a closed cabinet door.
• Attics, where a line was run for a bathroom above the insulation rather than below it.

Wind matters more here than most people expect. It does not make the air colder, but it strips heat away far faster, so a pipe in a drafty crawl space reaches freezing much sooner than the thermometer suggests. On an exposed lot north or east of town, that difference is real.

What to do before the cold arrives

Most of this is an afternoon of work, once a year.

• Disconnect every garden hose. A hose left attached traps water at the spigot and pushes the freeze back into the wall. Shut off the interior valve for that line and drain it.
• Insulate the pipe runs you can reach. Foam sleeves on exposed lines in the crawl space, basement and garage cost very little.
• Seal the drafts. Air leaks around the rim joist, crawl space vents and dryer vents let cold straight onto the pipes.
• Find your main shut-off valve now, while it is light and dry and you are not standing in water. Make sure everyone in the house knows where it is and can turn it.
• Know where your water heater drains, and keep the area around it clear.

When a hard freeze is forecast

The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities gives the same advice every year, and it works. Open the kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors so warm room air can reach the pipes behind them. Let a tap run at a slow trickle overnight, because moving water is far harder to freeze than still water. Keep the thermostat at a steady temperature day and night rather than setting it back while you sleep.

If you are leaving town for the winter, do not set the heat lower than 55°F, and ask someone to check the house. A pipe that bursts in an empty house runs until somebody finds it.

How to tell a pipe is frozen before it bursts

There is usually a window between the freeze and the break. The signs:

• A tap that gives a trickle, or nothing at all, while others run normally
• Frost or beads of condensation on an exposed pipe
• A bulge in the pipe, or a section that looks slightly swollen
• A smell from a drain, which can mean the drain line is blocked with ice
• Banging or gurgling when you open a tap

If you find one, shut off the main valve first, then open the nearest tap so the thawing ice has somewhere to go. Thaw gently, with a hair dryer or a space heater at a safe distance, working from the tap end back toward the frozen section. Never use an open flame or a blowtorch on a pipe.

If one has already burst

A half-inch supply line can put out several hundred gallons an hour. The first five minutes decide how much of the house is involved.

• Shut off the main valve. Before anything else, before looking for the leak.
• Open the taps to drain what is left in the system.
• Kill the power to the affected area at the breaker, but only if the panel is dry and you can reach it without standing in water. If you cannot, leave it and stay out.
• Photograph everything before you move anything. Your insurer will want to see the damage as it was found.
• Lift what you can off wet carpet, and get paper and fabric out of the room.
• Call for extraction. Water moves into walls, under flooring and into the subfloor within hours, and what stays wet grows mold within a couple of days.

A burst pipe is usually a strong insurance claim, because it is sudden and accidental, which is exactly what a standard policy is built to cover. What gets claims reduced or denied is delay: an insurer can argue that damage which spread after the event was avoidable. Documenting the loss and starting mitigation quickly protects the claim as much as it protects the house.

What happens next

Once the water is off, the job is getting the water out and then drying what it reached. If it ran into a basement, that becomes a flooded basement job, with the pad and any soaked drywall coming out so the slab and framing can dry. If it came through a ceiling from a bathroom above, the wet insulation above the ceiling has to come out before anything can dry properly.

The part people skip is the drying. Removing the visible water takes hours. Drying the structure takes days, with readings taken until the materials confirm dry. A wall closed up damp in January is a mold problem by March.

Quick reference