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lulu25314 · Feb 10, 2014, 10:15 AM

While I was rinsing dishes the other day the hot water in my kitchen sink reduced to a drip and the cold water stopped working completely (they have separate knobs). My initial thought was that my pipes froze. I went into the bathroom and both my hot and cold water worked in my shower. In my bathroom sink the cold water functions, but the hot water is also barely dripping when turned on fully. It has been over 24 hours now and we have taken 4 showers and the hot and cold water in the showers is still working fine. The temperatures have been in the 20s and 30s the last few days. My residence is a duplex that was formally a single family home. All of the faucets in the other unit are working normally.

massplumber2008 · Feb 10, 2014, 10:26 AM

Pretty rare for both hot and cold to stop flowing in a two handle faucet, and then the fact that you have another faucet with a hot water issue makes me think you do have frozen pipes...maybe?

Here, open the faucets that are in question and leave them open. Open the cabinet doors and see if water doesn't start to flow properly after a little while. If that doesn't resolve the issue, you may need to get under the sink and shut off the hot or cold faucet, disconnect one of the connections to the faucet and direct the hot or cold flexible tube (from shutoff) into a bucket to see if things are running or frozen. If you do this and no water flows from the shutoff then you have frozen pipes and we'll need to get a bit more aggressive.

I'm off to work, but will check back later.

Good luck!

Mark

lulu25314 · Feb 10, 2014, 04:14 PM

Ok, things I forgot to mention: I actually left the hot water faucet on in my kitchen and bathroom since yesterday. It is just barely dripping. I also placed a space heater in my bathroom. I'm not sure if this makes a difference but my kitchen and bathroom sinks are on opposite sides of the same wall. I forgot to open the cabinets so I ran home around 1pm today and did that. When I got home from work nothing had changed. It has been about 5 hours since I opened the cabinets. I haven't disconnected one of the connections yet because I noticed some blue tape on those flexible tubes. I'm afraid I will need some of that to put it back together so I'm going to run to the store and get that before I do anything. Both the hot and cold water in my shower as well as the cold water in my bathroom still work.

lulu25314 · Feb 10, 2014, 05:13 PM

OK, I think the pipes are frozen. The problem is not in the faucet. Also, my hot water for the dishwasher is connected to the same pipe as my kitchen sink and it isn't working either.

lulu25314 · Feb 11, 2014, 01:57 AM

New development: the water trickling from my hot water faucet in the kitchen is no longer hot (water trickling from bathroom got water faucet is still hot)

massplumber2008 · Feb 11, 2014, 06:24 AM

Sounds like your hot water is frozen solid at that sink/DW...UGH!

Did you disconnect the hoses under the sink (you don't need that tape...in fact, it is wrong to use tape in this application)? If so, what did you determine?

If you determined that the hot water is frozen, you want to go to the basement (if you have one) and chase the hot water pipe from a fixture that has hot water to one that doesn't...should find the frozen area pretty quickly that way. Here, for example, if you find a pipe up close to the foundation or headed up inside an exterior wall you'll want to concentrate your heat in that area. Metal pipes conduct heat, so you may also want to keep warming upstairs (cabinet open) and use a hair dryer on the pipes going upstairs, right?

Finally, if the pipes are frozen, the pipes may or may not have burst. If they have burst, you won't know until they thaw, so I strongly caution you to be careful with this so you don't come home to a flood, OK? Here, if you are going off to work all day hoping the pipes will thaw and not flood your place you could be in for an awful mess when you come home! I mention this as a precaution because it happens...quite a bit actually. In other words, don't mess with this much longer...call a plumber or handyman in to help here. If the pipes are burst somewhere, a service call is wayyyyy cheaper than a flood/mess!!

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