Freeze protection and winterization

Finding what is actually exposed

Protection starts with knowing where the vulnerable pipe is, and on most Texas houses it is in six places.

Hose bibs and exterior taps. The most common failure point statewide, and the easiest to protect.

The irrigation backflow preventer. A brass assembly above ground, usually near the meter, full of water and completely exposed. Expensive to replace and frequently overlooked.

Attic supply lines. Standard on Texas slab houses. Runs above the insulation are effectively outdoors, and a pipe crossing an attic in a multi-day freeze is at real risk.

Pipe in exterior walls. Particularly where the insulation was installed behind the pipe rather than in front of it, putting the pipe on the cold side.

Garages and unheated utility rooms. Water heaters, softeners, filtration and all their connections.

Crawlspaces on pier and beam houses. Vented to outside air by design, with supply and drain lines fully exposed.

Plus the odd cases: pool equipment, outdoor kitchens, well houses and pressure tanks, and any plumbing in an uninsulated addition or converted porch.

A walk round with a torch, an hour, and a note of what you find is the whole assessment. Everything after that is a decision about which items to protect and how.

What you can do yourself, ranked by value

1. Disconnect every hose. Ten minutes, free, and it prevents the single most common freeze failure in Texas. A hose left connected traps water in the bib, including in a frost-free, which is why so many of them split. Do this in November and leave them off.

2. Find and test the main shut-off. Locate it, turn it, confirm it closes and reopens. A valve you cannot find at two in the morning is not a shut-off. If it will not turn, get it replaced before winter rather than during it.

3. Insulate the backflow preventer. An insulated cover, or wrapping with pipe insulation and a waterproof outer layer. It has to stay dry, wet insulation is worse than none.

4. Foam covers on hose bibs. Cheap, and only useful once the hose is off.

5. Pipe insulation on anything visible in the garage, the crawlspace or an unheated utility room. Foam sleeves, straightforward, and covering the fittings matters as much as the straight runs.

6. Know where the irrigation shut-off is and turn the system off for winter.

7. Seal the obvious draughts. Crawlspace vents, a gap where the dryer vent passes through, a garage door that does not close properly. Freezing air moving over pipe is far worse than still cold air.

8. Buy a couple of foam covers and a roll of insulation now. The day a freeze is forecast, every hardware store in Texas is out of both.

What is worth having done properly

Attic pipe insulation. The largest single improvement on a typical Texas slab house, and awkward to do well yourself. Done properly it means insulating the full run including elbows and tees, and where possible relocating pipe below the insulation rather than above it.

Heat tape or heat cable on genuinely vulnerable runs. Self-regulating cable that draws power only as the temperature drops. Right for a specific exposed section that cannot be relocated or insulated adequately, not a substitute for insulation generally, and it needs a reliable circuit, which is worth remembering after the grid events of recent years.

Interior shut-off valves for exterior bibs. The single best structural improvement available. Each exterior tap gets a dedicated valve inside, so the line can be isolated and drained deliberately before a freeze and shut off in seconds if it splits.

Replacing standard bibs with correctly pitched frost-frees. Correctly pitched is the operative phrase. A frost-free installed level does not drain and offers no protection.

Insulating and sealing the crawlspace on pier and beam houses. Vent covers for winter, insulation on the supply lines, and sealing the worst of the draughts.

Relocating the most exposed pipe. Where a run crosses an attic in the coldest part of the house, moving it inside the envelope is the permanent answer rather than an annual mitigation.

An automatic leak shut-off valve. Not freeze protection as such, but it is the thing that limits the damage when protection fails. On a house that is empty during the day, or during a trip, it is the difference between a repair and a restoration.

The night before a forecast freeze

A checklist for the evening a hard freeze is coming, in the order worth doing it.

Disconnect any hose still attached. Check again. There is always one.

Drain and shut off the irrigation. Isolate the system and drain the backflow preventer if it has drain cocks.

Open cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls, kitchen and bathroom, so household heat reaches the pipe.

Set taps dripping. A slow steady drip from the fixtures furthest from where the water enters, hot and cold. Moving water is much harder to freeze, and the open tap relieves pressure if ice does form. Over a night it uses very little water.

Leave the heat on and set no lower than 60 °F, including in rooms you do not use and especially if you are leaving the house.

Open the attic hatch a little if pipes run up there. It lets some warm air into the space and it costs nothing.

Cover the pool equipment and follow the manufacturer's freeze procedure for the pump.

Close the garage door and keep it closed, particularly if the water heater lives there.

Know where the main shut-off is and put a torch beside the bed.

If you are leaving town during a freeze, shut the water off at the main and open the taps to drain the system. That is the only complete protection there is, and it takes five minutes.

Multi-day freezes and power loss

The advice above assumes an overnight freeze. A multi-day event, particularly one with power outages, is a different problem and recent Texas winters have made that clear.

What changes. Ground and structure temperatures keep falling rather than recovering in the afternoon. Attics and crawlspaces that survive one night at 25 °F will not survive three days at 15 °F. Interior temperatures fall steadily once heating fails.

Without power, heat tape does nothing, the furnace does not run, and the house cools towards outside temperature over a day or so. This is the scenario in which houses that had never had a freeze problem produced multiple splits.

The decision point. If the house is going to be without heat for more than a day in a hard freeze, draining the system is the right call. Shut off the main, open every tap high and low, flush the toilets, and drain the water heater if the cold is going to be prolonged. A drained system cannot split.

If you leave the house, drain it. Do not leave a heated house unattended in a multi-day freeze on the assumption the power will hold.

Coming back. Refill slowly with a tap open to purge air, and check every fixture and every visible run as pressure returns. Do not fire an electric water heater until the tank is confirmed full.

Afterwards. Walk the house properly, every tap, the attic, the ceilings, the meter with everything off. A split that has not started leaking yet is still a split.