The first hard freeze in North Texas usually lands between late November and mid-January, and the forecast gives about a week of warning. That week is not the time to find out which lines in your house are exposed. Late October and November are. This checklist is about the water lines themselves: where they run, which ones are vulnerable, and what to do about each before the weather turns. For what to do once a freeze is actually in the forecast, see freeze-event timing; for the broader prevention picture, see preventing frozen and burst pipes.
Start with the shutoff, not the pipes
Everything else on this list matters less if you cannot stop the water quickly. Before you touch a single pipe:
- Find the main shutoff. On most slab homes here it is at the meter box near the street, and often there is a second valve where the line enters the house, in the garage or a front-bed hose-bib stack. Know both.
- Turn it. A valve that has not moved in ten years may not move at all, or may not fully close. Shut it, open a faucet, and confirm the flow stops. If the valve weeps or will not seat, have a plumber replace it now, while it is a scheduled job rather than an emergency.
- Stage the tool. A meter key or a long-handled wrench that fits the curb stop belongs by the front door from November to March, not in the back of the garage.
A burst line at 3 a.m. with a working shutoff is a Category 1 water loss measured in gallons. The same break with a stuck valve is measured in hours and rooms.
Walk the house: where lines run in a North Texas home
Our homes were built for heat, not cold. The vulnerable lines are the ones that leave the conditioned envelope:
- Attic. Supply lines to upstairs bathrooms, water heaters set in the attic, and the lines feeding them often run above the insulation. Lift the insulation and look. Any line you can see from the attic walkway is a line the attic air can reach.
- Exterior walls. Kitchen sinks and bathroom vanities on outside walls, especially north- and west-facing ones. The pipe is inside the wall, but the wall cavity is colder than the room.
- Garage. Water heaters, softeners, and the lines feeding a utility sink or a refrigerator ice maker. An uninsulated garage door makes the garage an outdoor room on a freeze night.
- Hose bibs. Every exterior faucet, including the ones behind the shrubs you forgot about.
- Irrigation. The backflow preventer standing above grade near the meter is the single most commonly broken fitting after a freeze in our service area.
- Pool and spa equipment. Pumps, filters and the exposed plumbing around them.
- Slab penetrations. Where a line rises through the slab in a laundry room or garage closet, the stub is often bare.
Write the list down. It becomes your freeze-night checklist too.
Fix what you found, line by line
Insulate what you can reach. Closed-cell foam sleeves on attic and garage lines, with the seams taped and the elbows wrapped, not left open. Insulation slows heat loss; it does not create heat, so a line in an attic that stays below freezing for two days can still freeze. For those runs, consider having the line rerouted below the insulation or, for water heaters in the attic, wrapping the feed and drain lines together.
Hose bibs. Disconnect every hose. A connected hose traps water in the faucet body and is the most common reason a frost-proof bib splits. Add an insulated cover. If a bib is not frost-proof and feeds nothing you need in winter, a plumber can add an interior shutoff and drain.
Irrigation. Shut the irrigation supply valve, open the test cocks on the backflow preventer to drain it, and wrap the assembly with an insulated bag or blanket. Most residential controllers have a seasonal-off setting; use it, because a scheduled run on a freeze morning glazes the sidewalk and refills the assembly you just drained.
Exterior-wall cabinets. Make sure nothing stored under the sink blocks airflow, so you can open the doors on a freeze night and let room air reach the pipe.
Water heater and softener. Check that the temperature and pressure relief discharge line is not kinked or capped, and that the drain pan under an attic heater is intact with a drain line that actually leads somewhere. A pan that has cracked with age holds nothing.
Pool equipment. Know how to run the pump continuously through a freeze, or how to drain the equipment if the power goes out. Moving water is the usual protection; a power outage during a freeze is the usual failure.
Look for the leaks you already have
Late fall is also the time to find slow problems before cold makes them fast ones. A line that is already weeping at a fitting, a toilet supply with a corroded nut, a water heater with rust at the base: each of these is a small Category 1 loss today and a bigger one after freeze-and-thaw stress. Check the water meter with every fixture off. If the low-flow indicator moves, something is leaking, and it is better found in November than discovered as a wet ceiling in January.
What to keep on hand
- The meter key or wrench, by the door.
- Faucet covers for every bib, and a spare.
- A space heater you can safely aim at a garage water heater or an under-sink cabinet.
- Towels, a wet vacuum if you own one, and the number of a restoration contractor and your insurance agent in your phone, not in a drawer.
If a line fails anyway
Shut the water off first, then call. Standing water from a clean supply line is Category 1 at the moment it arrives, but it does not stay that way, and the drying clock starts when the water hits the floor, not when the plumber arrives. Document with photographs before you move anything, and report the loss to your carrier promptly. Whether a freeze-related loss is covered depends on your policy and the circumstances, and that decision rests with your carrier; what a restoration contractor controls is how fast the structure is dried and how well the work is documented.
Fire & Water Restoration Plus handles water mitigation and structural drying across Wylie and the Dallas–Fort Worth area, and our phones are answered 24/7 through every freeze event. For a free consultation on a home that has already had a loss, or to talk through what you found on this checklist, call 972-455-8252.