Plumbers in Sherman, Texas

Why the leak waits for the thaw

Water expands as it freezes and the split happens then, usually at the coldest point of a run. What it does not do is leak, because the thing that broke the pipe is also plugging it.

The failure and the flood are separate events. They can be a day apart. A house that was silent all through the cold snap is not a house that came through it, and by the time water is moving nobody is in the mood to look for the shutoff.

Ice moves before it melts. As a plug loosens, pressure behind it can shift it hard into a fitting or an elbow. That is why a line that survived the freeze intact sometimes fails ten minutes into the thaw, and why shutting the water off before things warm up is worth more than any amount of watching.

No flow at a tap is a warning, not a nuisance. If one fixture is dead while the rest of the house works, there is ice in that branch. That branch is the one to plan around, and it is the one to open before it thaws.

The order to walk the house as it warms

This is a sequence, and doing it out of order is what turns a repair into a restoration claim.

Find the house valve first, while it is still cold. Not the meter, the valve where the supply enters the house. Turn it off if any fixture is dead. You can restore water deliberately later; you cannot un-flood an attic.

Open the taps on the frozen branch. With the supply off, opening the fixtures on a plugged line gives melting ice somewhere to go and relieves the pressure behind it. It also tells you the moment flow returns.

Thaw from the fixture back towards the cold spot. Warmth at the outlet first, working along the run. Heat the middle of a plug and the water released between two ice plugs has nowhere to escape. Warm air, a heat gun kept moving or a lamp. No torch, ever, and no open flame near timber or insulation.

Walk the places that freeze here before you walk the rest. Attic runs above the garage, anything in an exterior wall on the north face, the laundry on an outside wall, and hose bibs checked from inside the house rather than at the tap. Ceilings and the top of walls tell you first.

Listen with everything off. Once the house is quiet, a running sound with no tap open is a leak you have not found yet. In a two storey house the sound travels further than the water stain suggests.

Do not forget the parts of the house nobody heats. A detached garage, a workshop, a well house or an outbuilding on the same supply will thaw hours after the house does, and the split in there runs unnoticed for a long time because nobody is standing in the room.

Refilling under control

The temptation after a freeze is to open the main valve fully and see what happens. It is the most expensive way to find out.

Open the main slowly, with one fixture running. A partial turn brings pressure up gradually, and a single open tap lets air out instead of hammering the system. Stand at the valve while it fills so you can close it again in a second.

Watch the meter after it settles. With everything closed, the meter should be still. A creeping dial is a leak, and it is much better to learn that in the first five minutes than from a ceiling.

Check the water heater is full before it is energised. An electric heater fired with an empty or partly empty tank destroys the upper element in seconds, and a gas unit does not enjoy it either. If the power or gas was off during the freeze, fill first and prove flow at a hot tap, then switch on.

Work outwards from the house. Hose bibs and any irrigation above ground get restored last, once you know the house itself is holding. An outdoor split with the supply open is a lot of water before anybody notices it.

The pipe that survived, and the leak three weeks later

Not every freeze failure is immediate. A run can stretch without splitting and then fail later under ordinary pressure, which is the version that gets argued about with insurers.

Look for the shapes. A bulge in CPVC, a length of PEX that has gone oval near a crimp, a copper section that has lost its round: all of those are pipe that has already yielded. They are cheap to replace now and expensive to replace through a ceiling in March.

Check the fittings, not just the straight runs. Ice loads concentrate at elbows and crimp rings. A weeping joint that appears after the thaw and stops when you wipe it is not resolved, it is intermittent.

Keep the failed section. If a claim follows, the piece of pipe with the split in it is evidence, and the sudden versus gradual distinction is what the policy turns on. We photograph before we cut and leave you the offcut.

Do the prevention while the memory is fresh. Insulation, a proper shutoff you can reach, and knowing which branch freezes first are decided far better in February than next December.

How a call plays out

Through a freeze weekend we take calls at any hour, and the first thing we will ask is whether the water is off. If it is not and a fixture is dead, we will talk you to the valve before we talk about a visit.

Sherman, Denison, Van Alstyne and the rest of Grayson County are on our route. We thaw before we cut where a line can be saved, refill under control rather than all at once, and photograph what failed so that your insurer is looking at the same thing we are.