Frozen Pipe Repair in Austin & San Antonio

If you can see and reach the frozen section, yes, carefully. Open the faucet it feeds so melting water and pressure have an outlet. Warm the pipe with a hair dryer, a heating pad or towels soaked in hot water, working from the faucet end back toward the frozen spot. Keep going until full flow returns. Never use a propane torch, a heat gun on high or any open flame; the pipe can be damaged, and attic insulation and framing catch fire easily. If the frozen section is inside a wall, under the slab or you cannot find it, stop and call. And if water starts leaking as the ice melts, the pipe split while it was frozen. Close the main and call us.

Yes, and it helps more than people think. Moving water freezes far more slowly than still water, and an open tap also relieves the pressure that builds between an ice plug and the closed faucet, which is what actually splits pipes. Choose the fixtures fed by lines in exterior walls or the attic, typically the kitchen sink and any bath on an outside wall, and run both hot and cold at a slow drip. Open the cabinet doors under those sinks so room air reaches the pipes. Disconnect garden hoses and cover hose bibs. Keep the thermostat at a normal setting overnight rather than turning it down. If you leave town, do not shut off the heat.

The ones that were never expected to see ice. Attic runs are the biggest risk, because many homes here route supply lines through an attic that is barely warmer than outside. Then hose bibs and the short stubs of pipe behind them, pipes in exterior walls feeding kitchen and bath fixtures, and anything in an unheated garage, including the water heater and its supply lines. Lines to a pool, an outdoor kitchen or an irrigation backflow assembly freeze early and often. In a typical winter none of these matter. In a freeze like February 2021, all of them do at once. We can walk the house in the fall and show you which runs need insulation or rerouting before it gets cold.

There is no safe number, because the damage is not about time so much as pressure. When water freezes it expands, and the ice plug traps the water between itself and the closed faucet. As more ice forms, that trapped water has nowhere to go and the pressure rises until something gives, usually a weak joint or a stretch of pipe some distance from the ice. A pipe can split within hours in a hard freeze, or hold for days if the faucet is open and pressure can escape. That is the reason to open a tap the moment you notice a fixture is dead, and to get the line thawed and checked rather than waiting for the weather to sort it out.