Frozen pipe burst: what to do

Texas gets two very different kinds of hard freeze, and pipes fail for the same basic reason in both: ice takes up more room than water, and something has to give. What changes is how much time the cold gets to work.

One cold night, ordinary by Texas standards

Most winters bring at least one freeze like this: temperatures drop below freezing for a matter of hours, usually overnight, then climb back above it by afternoon. In a freeze that short, the pipes most likely to fail are the ones already exposed to outside air, an unprotected hose bib, a supply line run along an uninsulated exterior wall, maybe one attic run that never got wrapped. Everything else in a typical house, buried under a slab or tucked inside conditioned walls, usually rides it out without trouble.

A freeze that doesn’t let up for days

Some freezes don’t stop at one cold night. Winter Storm Uri didn’t, settling over Texas for the better part of a week in February 2021, and the same exposed pipes that usually survive an ordinary freeze had days of sustained cold to fight instead of hours. Lines that had never failed before started splitting right alongside the usual suspects. Length of exposure, not just how low the temperature drops, is what changes the odds so much between one kind of freeze and the other.

Nothing shows until the ice lets go

Ice usually blocks a pipe instead of breaking it outright while everything’s still frozen solid. The actual crack in the pipe wall often happens quietly, sometimes days before anyone notices a thing. Nothing shows until the ice melts and full pressure comes back, which is usually when a family finds water coming from a spot that looked perfectly fine the night before.

The same three moves work either way

Whether a freeze lasts one night or five, the pipes at risk are always the same ones: whatever sits exposed to outside air. A trickle of water moving through a line resists freezing better than water sitting still, so cracking a faucet open on the most exposed run, just enough for a slow drip, is one of the few free things that actually helps. Wrapping foam insulation around an exposed pipe, disconnecting hoses from outdoor spigots, and knowing which valve shuts off that line ahead of time round out the same short list, no matter which kind of freeze is on the way.

Once a line does split anyway, the burst pipe cleanup page games out what to shut off first and what happens to the water once it’s inside a wall. The what to do after water damage guide pressure-tests the fuller sequence, first hour through first week, if that’s closer to where you’re standing right now.

Some readers are here because a pipe already split tonight. If that’s you, stop reading and call. Everyone else, on a calm afternoon months before the next freeze warning, the useful move is smaller: save this line somewhere you’ll actually find it once the temperature finally drops.