water damage

1. Act quickly. Start troubleshooting as soon as you notice a drop or stop in water pressure. A small ice blockage can be quickly thawed, but wait too long and you may have to contend with burst pipes.

2. Turn off the water supply and have a mop and bucket on standby.

3. Turn up the heat. If part of your plumbing is frozen, chances are other areas may be at risk. Turn up your heat tape and heating to prevent anything else from freezing.

Cottage Q&A: Should we heat our empty cottage?

4. Locate the frozen area. Turn faucets on and off along the plumbing line to find the affected area. If you get no water or just a trickle, the pipe leading to that faucet is likely frozen. Frosted pipes are a telltale sign of a frozen section. Invest in an infrared thermometer gun ($30-$100) and take temperature readings along the line until you find the frozen section. (I have also found these devices handy for troubleshooting an overheating engine, monitoring a woodburning stove, and achieving the perfect dough temperature for baking sourdough bread.)

5. Thaw the frozen section by wrapping an electric heating pad around the pipe. Ensure the affected faucet is open to relieve pressure on the system as it thaws. Alternatively, use a portable space heater or a hair dryer. Start at the section nearest the faucet and work your way back, applying heat until full water pressure has returned.

6. If your pipes have already burst or you arrive at the cottage to find the plumbing frozen solid, it’s probably time to call the plumber.

This article was originally published in the Winter 2021 issue of Cottage Life.

How do we repair damage from basement flooding? Our cottage has a fully-insulated basement with a concrete floor. Thanks to a sump well and proper drainage, this basement has stayed warm and dry for years. But in 2019-2020 there were record-high water levels on the Great Lakes. The water table rose to just under our floor. As the water table started to drop, a white powder appeared on the floor, and also around support pillars and internal block walls. What is this white powder, and how do we remove it? Once that is done, is there a product we could use to coat the floor?—Bob and Joan Bowman, Sauble Beach, Ont.

The white powder is likely efflorescence: the visible salts and minerals left behind when water evaporates. It’s not pretty, but it won’t hurt you.

Try cleaning it with vinegar and a scrub brush—that should remove it. If not, you could use a dedicated efflorescence cleaner. (Check hardware or home reno stores.)

Is your cottage at high risk of flooding?

As an absolute last resort, you could “upgrade to muriatic acid,” says Roger Frost of Napoleon Home Inspections in Barrie. (But PSA: it’s terrifyingly caustic stuff. The expert advice on using it ranges from “Cover every part of yourself in protection; consider installing an eye-wash station” to “Don’t touch it. Don’t even look at it.” We’d rather live with the white powder.)

After cleaning, you could coat the floor with an epoxy paint, but it can be prone to flaking, peeling, and blistering—that might look uglier than leaving the basement bare. And it’s not going to provide much waterproofing.

Cottage Q&A: A wet crawl space solution

“Stopping water from coming in is the best solution, and that could be impossible if the water table rises again,” says Frost.

Still, you have a few choices to handle future dampness problems, says Don Fugler, a building scientist formerly with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC): regular cleaning to deal with any stains, a “false floor” to hide the stains, or installing a pump to work with the sump and keep the water several inches lower than the floor. “But be aware that, if you are trying to stem the movement of water from a Great Lake, that pump might be running continuously for weeks,” says Fugler. A more extreme option would be to change the basement into an isolated crawl space, he says. Excessive? Maybe, but cottage country could be in store for decades more of high-water levels and flooding. “Who knows what eventually will happen with a changing climate?”

This article was originally published in the August/September 2021 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

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