Cause · seasonal, and conditional

Frozen pipes in Canada: the one exclusion that catches people out

This is a Canadian page. Freeze-thaw is the seasonal driver that does not exist in most of the markets these pages get copied from, and the insurance treatment has a condition attached that is unlike anything else on this site.

A pipe that freezes and bursts is normally a covered peril. The Insurance Bureau of Canada qualifies it: “damage arising from the freezing of indoor plumbing may not be covered if you are away during the normal heating season”. The peril is in — being away without doing what your insurer asks is what takes it out.

A note on why this page exists and is not a money page: burst pipe runs about 260 searches a month in Canada at a cost per click of $0.00 — nobody is advertising against it. We wrote it because Canadian winters make it a real question, not because it sells anything.

The condition inside the cover

Read the whole of it, because the second half is the half that gets dropped. IBC also states that “freezing-related damage that occurs despite these precautions, is typically covered”.

The General Insurance OmbudService — the independent body that handles disputes between Canadians and their home insurers — puts the same condition on its short list of the exclusions that most often decide a water claim:

Note where the number lives. The period of absence after which freezing damage is excluded is set by each insurer in its own wording; neither IBC nor GIO publishes one. If you are leaving a house or a cottage empty for the winter, that number — and what your insurer accepts as proof that the heat was checked — is the single thing worth confirming in writing before you go.

So this is not a peril you are expected to guarantee. It is the one peril on this site where the policy asks something of you in advance, and doing that thing keeps you inside the cover even if the pipe freezes anyway.

What it asks is specific rather than vague. IBC names it: many insurers require the plumbing to be drained, or the home to be checked regularly or daily to confirm heat is maintained, and it tells you to ask your insurance representative to confirm the necessary intervals for checking the property. That is a five-minute phone call with an answer you can write down, and it is worth making in October rather than in January.

What counts as adequate is not a number this site can give you, because it is set in your policy wording and it varies by insurer. But the situations where it comes up are entirely predictable, and they are worth naming:

• A cottage or second property left unheated over winter.
• A house left empty during a long absence with the thermostat turned down to save money.
• A rental or vacant property between tenancies.
• A furnace that failed while nobody was there to notice.

IBC’s cold-weather guidance puts the same condition in a second form, and adds where the pipe has to be:

“The heated portion” is the phrase to hold on to. A supply line in an unheated crawl space or a garage is outside it by definition, which is one more reason the next section matters. The same IBC piece separates the damage from the machine that caused it:

So when a furnace quits and the pipes freeze, the water damage is the claim and the furnace is your bill. IBC’s instruction for the gap between the breakdown and the repair is to shut off the water, drain the pipes and heat the house safely with temporary sources.

Frozen pipes in Canada: what the cold actually costs

The reason this is a Canadian page is in the insurance record. In January 2024 a cold snap across British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan produced what IBC described as widespread water damage from frozen and burst pipes:

Two things in that release are worth more than the headline. Roughly seven in ten claims by count were personal property claims — houses, not businesses. And the event followed an unseasonably mild start to the winter, which is the pattern that catches people: the house was ready for an ordinary January, not for four straight days below −40 in Edmonton.

IBC’s line in the same release is the one this page is built around. An insurance policy does not change in winter or with the temperature; it covers perils, and freezing is one of them. What changes in winter is how much the conditions attached to that peril matter.

Away, vacant or a cottage: where the cover narrows

Leaving a house empty is the scenario where the conditions bite, and the insurance language has two words for it that are not interchangeable. The General Insurance OmbudService sets them out: an unoccupied home is one you intend to return to, with the utilities working; a vacant one is a home you do not intend to live in or rent out for a set period.

“It depends on the policy” is GIO’s own preface to that number, so treat thirty days as the convention to ask about, not a rule to rely on. Once a home is vacant in the policy’s sense, IBC is blunt about frozen pipes:

“Even if you have permission for vacancy” is the part people miss. Telling the insurer you will be away keeps the policy alive; it does not by itself keep freezing inside it. GIO lists three ways to deal with an empty house: a routine check by someone you trust, with a log of each visit; an endorsement that removes the vacancy exclusion; or a separate vacant-home policy. Which of those your insurer offers is a question for your broker before you leave.

A cottage is the seasonal version of the same problem, and IBC’s guidance on seasonal property says the cover is often narrower to begin with:

Named-perils cover, frozen pipes on the list of things that may not be covered, and an expectation that you winterize: for a cottage, draining the system in the autumn is not a tip, it is usually the condition. If you rent the cottage out, tell your insurer — IBC asks owners to say how often the property is used and whether it is rented.

Which pipes actually freeze

Not the ones in the heated middle of the house. The ones in the parts of the building envelope that were never really inside it.

Exterior walls. Supply lines run in an outside wall, especially where insulation is thin or a cavity was never filled. The kitchen sink on an outside wall is the classic.

Unheated crawl spaces and attached garages. A garage with a laundry sink or a hose bib is a standard freeze location.

Attics. Where plumbing was run above the insulation line during a renovation.

Outdoor taps. The single commonest freeze failure in Canadian housing, and the single easiest to prevent: a hose left connected over winter holds water against the valve and the pipe behind it freezes inside the wall.

Crawl space and rim joist areas. Where a draught from a vent or a gap crosses a pipe run.

The pattern is that freezing happens where cold air reaches a pipe, which is nearly always a draught rather than a temperature. Sealing the draught is usually less expensive and more effective than insulating the pipe.

Thawing a frozen pipe without making it worse

If a tap gives nothing and the weather has been cold, assume a freeze.

1. Open the tap it feeds. Leave it open. This gives the melt somewhere to go and relieves pressure as the ice releases.
2. Find your main shut-off before you start. If the pipe has already split, the split only becomes obvious when the ice thaws — that is the moment the flooding starts, and you want to be standing next to the valve.
3. Warm it gently, from the tap end back towards the frozen section. Working from the tap end means the meltwater has an escape route instead of being trapped between two plugs of ice. What to warm it with is where two cities disagree — below.
4. Never use an open flame. Every city source on this page says so; a torch in a wall cavity is a fire, not a repair.
5. If you cannot reach it, stop. A pipe frozen inside a wall or under a floor is a plumber's job, and a plumber costs far less than the wall.

Toronto and Winnipeg give opposite advice on heat

The City of Toronto lists the tools you can use:

The City of Winnipeg says the reverse about two of them:

Both agree on no open flame, and both put the safe end of the range first: warm towels, slow heat. Where they part is electric heat — Toronto allows a hair dryer or space heater as long as it is never left unattended; Winnipeg says not to use them at all and to wrap the pipe in warm, not hot or boiling, towels or call a licensed contractor. If your city publishes guidance, follow your city’s. Where it does not, Winnipeg’s is the more cautious of the two, and Toronto’s warning about unattended devices applies to every version.

Whose pipe is frozen: the City’s side or yours

A frozen service pipe — the one from the street — is split between the city and you, and the line is not drawn in the same place everywhere.

In both cities the first call when a tap gives nothing in a cold snap is 311. Toronto says crews will investigate and, if the freeze is on private property, tell you to call a plumber; Winnipeg says it thaws its own portion at no cost. In Toronto your side starts at the property line; in Winnipeg the City puts the owner’s responsibility at the pipe inside the home and from the house to the shut-off valve.

Running a tap to stop a freeze: check before you do it

The same precaution is priced differently. Toronto presents a pencil-thin stream from the lowest tap as an option you pay for; Winnipeg tells you not to do it unless the City has notified you, or you pay the full water and sewer charges. Neither is free, and neither is a substitute for heat where the pipe runs.

Once water is flowing, check the whole run. Ice can split a pipe in a place that only starts leaking once the pressure comes back.

If it has already burst

A burst supply line delivers water at mains pressure continuously. Volume, not contamination, is the problem, and the first minute matters more than anything else on this page.

1. Main shut-off, immediately.
2. Open the lowest taps in the house to drain what is in the system.
3. Cut power to affected areas at the panel if water is anywhere near electrical.
4. Photograph before anything is moved.
5. Call your insurer, then a restorer. Your policy obliges you to limit the damage once you know about it — see duty to mitigate — and waiting for permission to start drying is not what that duty means.

The water is clean to start with, which is Category 1 under ANSI/IICRC S500. Volume carries it further than a dirtier, smaller loss would go, so the drying scope is frequently larger than the visible damage suggests — under floors, into wall cavities, down into the level below.

Before you go away for the winter

The single highest-value list on this page, because it is the scenario where the exclusion actually bites.

Keep the heat on. This is the one that decides whether you have cover. Turned down is fine if your wording allows it; off is the version that causes arguments.

Or drain the system properly. Water off at the main, system drained, and — if the property will be genuinely cold — the traps dealt with. Half-draining is worse than not draining.

Disconnect outdoor hoses and shut the interior valves to the outdoor taps. Five minutes, every autumn, prevents the most common freeze failure in the country.

Open cabinet doors under sinks on outside walls. Free, and it lets room heat reach the pipes.

Have someone check the property. Many policies require this for an unoccupied property, at a stated interval. A furnace that quit on 2 January and was found on 20 January is a very different loss from one found on 3 January.

Read your own wording on vacancy. Ask your broker what your policy needs from you and write the answer down. Ask in particular how many days away makes the house vacant under your wording, how often someone must check it, and whether an endorsement is available if you will be gone longer.

Keep a log of the checks. GIO’s advice for a house someone else is watching: check every room, run the taps if the water is on, confirm the heating is working, and write down each visit. If there is a claim, the log is the evidence that the condition was met.

Questions people actually ask

Where to read next

• Is this one covered? Twelve situations compared
• Ice dams, the other cold-weather failure
• Pipes in a cold crawl space
• What you are obliged to do once you know
• How a Canadian water claim runs
• Every cause, side by side