Hi, I'm looking after my elderly mother's house in the just recently flash frozen north (Ontario, Canada) and have a major issue with how to proceed with fixing a pressing frozen outdoor garden hose problem such that I don't make it potentially worse for the copper pipes inside the house. During the summer, the garden hose had a slow leak at the outside sprayer end which I ignored mostly due to difficult access to the outside faucet in the shed at the time- the hose continuing for around 6 feet inside a jam packed shed. The beginning/inside part of the hose from the faucet is strung up along the top wall of the 7 foot long shed and exits outside the other end of the shed through a hole near the bottom outside where the bulk of the hose is spiralled on an outdoor corral with the sprayer still attached to the hose.

Although I did get access inside the shed a month ago where I was able to turn off the outside faucet as tight as I could, it continued to slow drip at the spray end of the hose outside. Since it was still warm out, I let it go, thinking that when I turned off the inside faucet closest to it in the heated basement come cooler weather that that would take care of the outside drip and I could then drain the hose and seal off everything. (We've always left the drained hose attached to the outside faucet in the shed and also left the rest of it outside on the corral during the winter and just covered it with a small tarp and it's always been fine. It's also too difficult to pull the whole hose out through the very crowded shed).

I did turn off the closest faucet in the heated basement yesterday while the weather was still mild (and the shed is right up against this heated basement wall) and was later surprised to see the outside hose still dripping at the sprayer end. Today suddenly we're getting a dump of snow and the temperature is -15 Celsius or around 3 Fahrenheit and the drip coming out of the hose sprayer outside is now frozen as is the whole rest of the hose spiralled around the hose holder/corral outside.

My questions are: what should I do first? Remove the junk from inside the shed near the faucet and disconnect the hose? I'm not even sure if the hose inside the shed is frozen closer to the faucet- just that the spiral of hose outside the shed is frozen solid. What if it's likely both the outside shed and nearby inside basement faucets both have leaky washer problems? Also, if I remove the shed faucet hose will the faucet continue to drip or freeze and will I be then exposing the inside faucet and pipes to more cold air and damage via the shed? Should I just leave the hose attached for now?

From an emergency triage perspective, if I can only change the washer on one particular faucet, which one should it be? The outdoor shed faucet or the indoor basement faucet? If I'm able to do the indoor one, can I leave the outdoor shed one for summer?

Unfortunately, the inside wall faucet in the basement is in an extremely difficult to reach crawlspace area with the red handle facing me but the faucet stem and attached copper pipe facing the other direction towards a wall in a tight space. I can also just see that the first smaller nut on this faucet is heavily limed up- the faucet is original to the 50 year old home- and looks like the nut on it was never touched. I did spray the nut with 3 in 1 penetrant earlier today.

Right now I have the heat uncomfortably cranked up in the house to warm the basement to protect the inside pipe leading from the shed to the faucet on the other side of the wall in the basement. Although, as far as I know, this pipe has never frozen or cracked. I also put a bit of tarp and windbreak around the outdoor spiral of frozen hose outside on the corral to try reduce the transfer of cold through to the shed- but that's probably too little too late. :-(

I'm now just trying to triage the problems and though I've never done this kind of repair on this kind of faucet, I'm not afraid to try, just nervous about the order of how to go about it so I don't make things much worse, as in burst indoor pipes. (The garden hose I don't care about so much). It's forecast to remain quite cold for the next couple of days and then up a bit to around 5 Celsius or 40 Fahrenheit. It also gets dark here around 4:30 pm, so working outside is time limited.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I didn't want to leave anything out. Any advice asap or help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks

Remove the hose from the hose bibb and turn it on from the outside. Inside the water to the hose bibb should be shut off completely. closed water and freezing temps cause expansion and distortion to the copper and brass. Either turn off the pressure or prevent the pipe from freezing.

Best Wishes