Plumbing in North Dakota fails on the heating-season edges: exterior walls, sill cocks, garage lines, and wells that were not ready for a long hard run. A kitchen sink on an outside wall can freeze while the rest of the house feels fine. Shut the water if a line has split. Mopping is not a diagnosis. Know the main shutoff before the night you need it. If the meter is moving and the fixtures are off, you still have a supply leak.
High-efficiency furnaces and frozen plumbing share a basement and get blamed for each other. A condensate line that froze is a heating shutdown. A supply line that froze is a flood when it thaws. Say which water you are looking at. Sewer vents can frost closed and push smells or slow drains that look like a clog. A cable will not fix a vent full of frost. Ask before you buy a clearing you do not need.
Wells, pitless adapters, and pressure tanks belong in the first sentence on a farmstead. Town houses should talk about the water heater, the floor drain, and the basement bath. A tank that has been working all season can weep at the base while you are busy with the burner. Name gas or electric, the vent, the pan, and the shutoff. Hard water and a neglected tank are why the bottom fails before the family expected a project.
Spring at the end of the heating season brings melt on clay, especially in the east, and sump pumps that have sat idle. Test them before the yard thaws into the window wells. Do not discharge a sump into a sanitary line it was never meant to feed. A hose bib left on through the season splits and then floods the wall cavity on the first warm afternoon. That is a predictable call. Make it before the thaw if the handle is still in your hand.
Say leak, freeze, drain, well, or water heater, and name the town. Say whether you can shut the water off and whether the heat is running. If a ceiling stain is under an ice dam, say that so a roof leak is not chased as a pipe. Call the number on this page.