Winter in North Texas is mostly a bluff. Two bad nights, a lot of local news in parkas, and by Thursday everyone’s back in short sleeves. So nobody insulates anything. Why would they?
Until the bluff gets called. Water swells when it freezes, and a pipe is a closed space with no give in it. Something splits. Usually at a joint, usually in the dark, usually behind drywall. February 2021 showed plenty of Texas families exactly how that goes.
So do this now, while it’s still warm enough to stand in the garage with coffee and no gloves. A burst pipe is a raven of its own sort. Shows up uninvited, leaves, and the carpet says nevermore.
Know where the water stops
Quick test. Ask everyone in your house where the private shutoff valve is. You’ll get shrugs.
Dallas Water Utilities says these valves tend to sit near an outside faucet close to the house. Older homes sometimes have one buried in the ground that looks like an upside-down “L.” Turn the handle so it sits perpendicular to the pipe, and the water quits.
Go find yours. Turn it once to make sure it moves, because a valve rusted solid is a lousy discovery to make while the ceiling drips. Tie a bright tag to it. Show the older kids. And if you’re in a water emergency and can’t get it shut, Dallas residents can call 3-1-1.
Outside gets hit first
Cold finds the exposed stuff before anything else, so that’s where you start.
Disconnect the garden hoses and drain them. Leave one attached and it keeps water sitting right against the faucet. Cover the outdoor faucets with insulated covers.
Wrap pipes in the garage, the attic, a crawl space, anything along an exterior wall. Foam sleeves, cheap, one aisle at the hardware store. If you’ve got a pier-and-beam house, cover the foundation vents too.
The garage is the one people skip. They’ll bundle up the spigot by the front door and ignore the supply line along the garage wall, because the garage isn’t really “the house” in anyone’s head. The pipes don’t share that opinion.
Check the sprinklers while you’re out there. City of Dallas ordinance requires automatic systems to carry a rain and freeze sensor. If yours is dead or missing, shut the system off by hand. Water running in a freeze puts sheets of ice on streets and driveways.
Decide who you’ll call before you need them
Here’s one that never makes the checklists. A hard freeze doesn’t break one pipe in Dallas. It breaks a lot of them, close together, and plumbers’ calendars fill up quick. Whoever starts searching at 2 a.m. is behind whoever saved a number last month.
Get an emergency plumber Dallas homeowners can actually reach after dark, and put the number in your phone and on the fridge. Ask about hours. Ask whether burst-pipe calls on weekends and holidays are routine for them.
Keep a backup, since the first number might go straight to a full voicemail. It takes a couple of minutes on a quiet afternoon, and it beats scrolling search results in wet socks.
When the freeze arrives
Now you’re just keeping watch.
Let both faucets drip, hot and cold. Thin trickle, nothing dramatic. AAA says even a slight trickle can keep pipes from freezing. The hot side gets forgotten all the time, even though both lines run through the same chilly walls.
Open the cabinet doors under the sinks, particularly on exterior walls, so room air can reach the pipes. Caulk or insulate gaps where pipes enter a wall. Kitchen and bathroom sinks on outside walls are the repeat offenders.
People assume the inside of the house is safe because the thermostat says 70. The thermostat isn’t measuring the cavity behind the cabinet, though. That space can run much colder than the room.
Turn it into a family job. Kids get the hoses, a teenager handles the cabinet doors, you take the valve. Whoever touched something remembers it.
Leaving town?
Don’t rely on a drip. If you’ll be gone several days, shut off the water at the private valve and drain the outdoor faucets. A freeze then can’t flood the place while nobody’s around. Tell a neighbor too. Walking into a lake in your living room is a miserable way to end a December vacation.
If a pipe freezes anyway
If a faucet only dribbles or gives nothing during a freeze, there may be ice behind it. Leave the tap open and warm the pipe gradually with a heating pad, hair dryer or hot towel, starting near the faucet and moving toward the colder stretch.
Rushing it is a mistake. No open flames.
Burst pipe? Shut the main valve, leave the faucets open, call a plumber. Skip the mop for now. Water damage doesn’t wait around for second thoughts.
Cheap, dull, worth it
None of it’s glamorous. Foam sleeves, a hose, a trickle, a phone number. Grunge worked because it stripped the polish off and kept what held up.
Your plumbing prep deserves the same attitude. Do the cheap, dull stuff now, and the freeze turns into something you tell people about over breakfast, not a bill you stare at for a month.