The faucet that won't run
You turn the tap in the kitchen or the bathroom and nothing comes out, or just a trickle. Outside, it's been in the teens or single digits overnight, maybe for two or three days running, which is about what Springfield gets most winters once a good arctic blast settles over the Ozarks. The pipe isn't broken yet. It's just frozen solid somewhere between the wall and the water main, and right now is the time to deal with it carefully, because a pipe that's frozen and still intact is a fixable problem. One that's already split is a different job entirely.
Why this happens so much here
A lot of homes in Springfield and the surrounding county were built in the 1950s through the 1980s, when crawl spaces were standard and insulation codes were a lot thinner than they are now. Pipes running through those crawl spaces, through unheated garages, or along exterior walls in older additions don't have much protection from a hard freeze. Southwest Missouri's winters are inconsistent, mild stretches in the 40s and 50s followed by sudden drops below freezing, and that swing is actually harder on plumbing than a steady cold climate. Pipes that never froze last January can freeze this January because the cold snap came faster or lasted a day longer.
Exposed pipes under sinks on exterior walls, hose bibs, and lines running through crawl spaces are the usual suspects. If you've had freezing trouble before in a particular spot, that's where to look first.
More on this from emergency plumber springfield mo.
What to check before you do anything
Find out which pipe is frozen. Run every faucet in the house and note which ones are affected. If it's just one fixture, the blockage is probably close to that fixture. If it's the whole house, the freeze is likely closer to where the water line enters, often in the crawl space or at the meter.
Look for the obvious. Check under sinks, in the crawl space access if you have one, and anywhere a pipe runs along an uninsulated exterior wall. You're looking for a section that's noticeably colder to the touch than the rest of the line, sometimes with a bit of frost on the outside of the pipe itself.
Open the faucet partway before you do anything else. Even a trickle of flow relieves pressure as the ice starts to melt, and that pressure relief is what keeps the pipe from splitting.
How to thaw it yourself
Apply heat gently and gradually, starting at the end nearest the faucet and working back toward the blockage. A hair dryer on a low or medium setting works well. So does a space heater aimed at an exposed section, or towels soaked in hot water wrapped around the pipe and re-soaked as they cool. Keep the faucet cracked open the whole time.
Never use a propane torch, a blowtorch, or any open flame. Plastic pipe melts, old solder joints can fail, and PEX and copper both expand fast enough under direct flame heat to crack. This is the single most common way a simple frozen pipe turns into a flooded house.
Be patient. A pipe that took three days to freeze solid might take an hour or more to thaw properly. If you don't see any improvement in water flow after thirty minutes of steady gentle heat, stop and reassess rather than cranking up the heat source.
When to stop and call someone
If you can't find the frozen section, that's a sign it's somewhere inaccessible, inside a wall, under a slab, or deep in the crawl space where you can't safely reach it. That's a job for an emergency plumber, especially if it's the middle of the night or a weekend and the whole house is without water.
If you hear a hiss, see a bulge in the pipe, or notice water stains spreading on a ceiling or wall, the pipe has likely already split and is refilling behind the ice plug. Shut off the main water valve immediately and call a plumber. Don't keep applying heat at that point, since thawing it will just let the water run freely through the crack.
And if your water has been off for more than a few hours in genuinely dangerous cold, a licensed plumber with the right tools can usually get to a hidden freeze faster and more safely than continued DIY effort. Springfield's plumbers see this same pattern every hard freeze, old crawl space lines, exterior wall runs, hose bibs, and they know where to look first in houses of this era.