The burial of sewer and water pipes below the maximum ground frost depth can be very costly and laborious in regions with cold winters. If a freeze protection measure is applied, the utility lines can be installed in a shallower trench to reduce the excavation needs during construction and maintenance works. One freeze protection measure, so called heat tracing, consist in supplying heat along the pipes. In this work, the use of 4th generation district heating as a heat tracing solution was investigated at a pilot site in Kiruna, Sweden. The influence of the system on sewer and water pipes temperatures was studied experimentally and numerically at a snow-free and snow-covered cross section. The study showed that, under the climatic conditions of the experiment, a heat tracing temperature of 25 ˚C allowed to prevent freezing of the pipes while keeping drinking water pipes in safe temperature range at both cross sections. The other main result was that a finite volume model of the sections was developed and showed a good fitting to the experimental data.