Plumbing in Montana freezes in exterior walls, in crawls, and in cabins that were closed without a plan. It also fails on wells, pressure tanks, and septic lines that a hard night or a slope full of melt will expose. Shut the main if a line has split. Know where that valve is before you need it. If the meter moves with the fixtures off, the leak is still live. A vacant cabin and a full-time house should not be described as the same emergency.
Chinook country adds a special mess. A thaw runs melt into a basement or a crawl, and the next hard night freezes the line you just used. Sort roof water, surface water, and supply water before anyone opens a wall. A cable clears a clog. It does not fix a belly, roots, or a vent full of frost. Mountain houses with plumbing in a freezing crawl need heat and access named in the scope. Plains houses on town water still have sill cocks and garage lines that the wind can reach.
Water heaters work through the long cold and weep at the base when everyone is watching the furnace instead. Name gas or electric, the vent, the pan, and the shutoff. If you smell trouble at a gas vent, stop using it. Wells that went muddy after a melt, or a pressure tank that short-cycles, belong in the first sentence on a rural place. Do not send a sump into a septic or a sanitary line it was never meant to feed. Know where the discharge goes.
Finished basements and tight log walls hide a leak until it has traveled. Say if access is poor. Hose bibs on the windward wall should be shut from inside before the season locks them. Spring melt off a hillside will test the grade and the window wells, which is a drainage fact even when the call started as a pipe. Say whether the wet spot followed a thaw. That one detail keeps a roof leak from being chased as plumbing.
Say leak, freeze, well, drain, or water heater, and the town. Say if you can shut the water off and if the heat is on. A sagging ceiling is not a bucket. Call the number on this page.