You need to get your heating on now and thaw out the pipes, when water turns to ice it expands and bursts your pipes..... leave a tap open maybe to allow for expansion and give the ice somewhere to expand to.... you may find that when they thaw out you already have a burst pipe somewhere.  I would locate your shut off valve and even turn the water off when you go out to avoid coming home to a flood!!

- and contact the regie now, so they can fix it.

hey craigy,

thanks for the advice. heating on full blast since yesterday and opened the water tap. i think i've avoided the worst but i still don't have cold water (ironic, isn't it?).

fingers crossed!

ah, yeah, the regie. this being France, that would probably take 3 weeks or more :(

thanks for responding though!

I had the same problem.

First I put a heater next to the wall where the pipes are. Didn't help.

Next, since the hot and cold pipes are very close to each other, I let the hot water run a very small trickle (just enough to let the hot water pipe stay hot). This fixed it for me.

However, the easiest solution of of course just to wait for the weather to change. It'll only take a week or so. I'm sure your friends won't mind if you delay your showers for a while.

--tor

yeah, i tried that too. no luck so far :(

Minda, a colleague of mine had the same problem. He called a plumber, who not surpisingly, could do nothing. (Couldn't even find where the pipes were in the wall.)

However, he did suggest to my friend to try to push hot water into the frozen pipes, by blocking the tap, and then opening the hot and cold water taps. You can try, but I cannot imagine that it would work.

Looks like you may have to wait till the spring...

There is a very kinky way to read this thread =))

before you do anything, that might cause damage, make sure that you review the contents of your house insurance policy ;-)

Napalm.