How to Keep Your Home’s Pipes from Freezing

Professional plumber installing plumbing manifolds

Prevent frozen pipes this winter by insulating exposed plumbing, maintaining a steady indoor temperature, and keeping a small trickle of water flowing through taps during extreme cold. 

Simple steps like opening cabinet doors can also help warm air reach vulnerable plumbing, reducing the costly damage from frozen, burst pipes.

Frozen pipes to the tub in my master bathroom have caused me many headaches in years past, so, luckily for you, I’ve encountered this problem first-hand. By implementing a combination of these tips, I’ve kept everything from freezing for a few years.

Keep the Thermostat On

A woman is pressing the down button of a wall attached house thermostat with digital display showing temperature 70 degree Fahrenheit for heating, cooling, electricity and gas saving
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Don’t shut off the heat completely. Instead, maintain a consistent, minimum temperature, even if you plan on leaving the house for a few days or aren’t living in it currently. Keep the thermostat set at a minimum of 55 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent your pipes from reaching freezing temperatures.

My Tip: A smart thermostat is helpful in this situation. When I go away for a weekend to play in the snow or jet away somewhere warm, I can drop the thermostat lower than usual and then turn it back to a reasonable temperature a few hours before I arrive home. That way, it’s comfortable when I walk in the door.

Turn On a Faucet

Water moving through the pipes, even very slowly, will help keep them from freezing. Turn on a faucet in the room where the pipes typically freeze (if you have a space more prone to freezing than others) or one furthest from the main valve.

The faucet doesn’t need to be running at full force — even a drip or trickle will suffice without running up your utility bill. Nor do you need to run hot water — cold is fine. The important thing is movement of any kind. Moving water resists freezing as the motion disrupts the formation of ice crystals and distributes any available heat through the liquid. The force moving the water also generates added kinetic energy that can prevent freezing.

Insulate Pipes in Unheated Areas

insulating the copper pipes with foam
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Depending on where the pipes are and your access to them, insulate or winterize them to prevent them from freezing. You can wrap exposed pipes found in crawl spaces, basements, or garages in insulation sleeves or foam pipe insulation or add extra rolled or blow-in insulation. 

If you can’t access the pipes directly, you can cover walls with Styrofoam or stack heavy, insulating items in front of them to help trap heat and block cold.

My Tip: Ultimately, this practice made the most significant difference for me. My house is built so the tub in the master bath juts out from the side of the house and doesn’t have anything underneath it. When it’s cold, the wind can blow up under that overhang and freeze the pipes under the tub.

A few years ago, I accessed the bottom of the overhang and installed better insulation around the pipes. In the winter, I also block the front of the overhang with straw bales to keep the wind from blowing up under it.

Seal Gaps and Cracks

Check areas where pipes come through the walls into your home, looking for gaps or cracks where cold air can enter. Seal drafty spots with caulk or foam insulation to prevent air infiltration.

Encourage (Warm) Air Circulation Around Pipes

To prevent pipes under the kitchen or bathroom sink from freezing, open the cabinet doors. Opening the doors lets cold air out and encourages the circulation of warmer air around the pipes. This will keep the temperatures inside and outside the cabinet on a more even keel instead of allowing the pipes to sit in a pocket of unheated, colder air.

Use a Space Heater

close up image of space heater
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Pipes in unheated areas of your home are at the highest risk of freezing. When it’s frigid outside, or there’s a cold snap in the forecast, you can be proactive and use a space heater to keep pipes warmer. As mentioned before, try to keep the temperature in your home at least 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

To prevent fires, keep the space heater at least 3 feet away from flammable items, never use an extension cord to run it, and keep it free of dust and debris.

Heat Unused Spaces that Have Pipes

To help conserve energy during the winter months and keep utility bills down, many of us close the doors and register vents to unused rooms so that we aren’t heating unused spaces. This can be a practical way to watch your budget, but if you have bathrooms or laundry rooms with pipes, it’s best to open these doors or vents and keep them heated when it’s cold enough your pipes can freeze.

My Tip: My master bathroom doesn’t have a register vent. The builder must have assumed it would get heat or air conditioning from the master bathroom or the adjacent hallway, so a vent wasn’t necessary. However, it does mean that I must be careful and keep the doors open when temperatures get frigid to keep the bathroom warm.  

Add Pipe Heating Cables or Heat Tape

Install heat tape or pipe heating cables around pipes that tend to freeze during the winter. These products are designed to keep pipes warm during extreme cold spells, but they differ slightly in their design and functionality. 

Mike Vogel, the Montana State University Extension housing and environmental health specialist, recommends that “following the manufacturer’s instructions is critical. Heat tape should not be put in contact with house materials other than the metal pipe intended and there should be no use of extension cords.”

Prices for heating cables and heat tapes vary, but an average 3-foot heating cable costs about $30; you can find them at local hardware and home-improvement stores, big box retailers, and online. 

Close the Garage Door

In many instances, pipes may run through the interior walls that separate your house and garage or along the walls inside the garage. To help prevent these pipes from freezing, keep your garage door closed whenever possible to retain heat in the garage. 

Turn Off the Water Main

a person turning the valve of a residential water pipeline
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The final tip is useful in the event you lose power (and, subsequently, heat) for a prolonged period. When there is no way to keep your house heated, it may be in your best interest to shut the water off to your house completely. Turn it off at the water main and drain as much water from the pipes as possible. If there isn’t water in the pipes, it can’t freeze.

Your shut-off can typically be found outside near the water meter, inside along the foundation wall where the main comes into the house, close to the water heater, or by your kitchen sink.  

My Tip: Take a few minutes and locate the shutoff before you need to know where it is. It’s much less stressful to look on a random Tuesday afternoon when it’s sunny and warm versus when it’s 15 degrees Fahrenheit and dark outside, and your anxiety is high because you have no running water. My shut-off is under a cap in the driveway, so it isn’t easily accessible if there’s a bunch of snow or ice on the ground. Fortunately, though, I have a shut-off on the water line just after it comes out of the water heater, where I can turn the water off before it moves through the house.

FAQs About How to Keep Your Home’s Pipes from Freezing

At what temperature do pipes freeze?

If there is water in pipes, they can freeze anytime the temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. They are most likely to freeze, though, once the thermometer drops further and stays below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The longer the temperatures are below that point, the higher the likelihood of frozen pipes.

How long can pipes stay frozen without bursting?

Once your pipes freeze, the time they can stay frozen without bursting depends on the temperature and how long it’s been cold. Pipes are most likely to burst after being frozen for more than five or six hours and are still exposed to freezing temperatures.

What is the best way to unfreeze pipes?

The safest and most effective way to unfreeze pipes is to warm them and the surrounding area gradually. You can do this by running a space heater nearby, and if you can access the pipes directly, use a hair dryer, heat tape, or even hot, wet towels to heat the pipe itself. 

My Tip: If you can’t access the pipes directly (which I could never do when the ones to my tub froze), you may have to get a little creative. I would boil water on my stove and put as much in the tub as possible. Since the pipes didn’t touch the tub directly, I didn’t worry the hot water would heat the pipes too quickly and crack them. 

Between the water in the tub and running a space heater in my bathroom, it would create enough heat to unthaw the pipes over time. It didn’t work as quickly as it could have if I had direct access to the frozen pipes, but it proved effective.

Staying Ahead of the Freeze

Frozen pipes are never fun to face, and trying to keep them from freezing can seem like an uphill battle. The above tips are great steps toward keeping the water running, no matter the temperature, especially if you combine as many practices as possible. With a bit of preparation, you can keep your pipes safe and functional, even when the temperature plummets!

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Amanda Shiffler

Most comfortable with soil under her fingernails, Amanda has an enthusiasm for gardening, agriculture, and all things plant-related. With a master's degree in agriculture and more than a decade of experience gardening and tending to her lawn, she combines her plant knowledge and knack for writing to share what she knows and loves.