Want To Freeze Your Pipes This Winter? Here’s How.

Winter can be long and boring and frozen pipes are hilarious. This weekend when you’re looking for something fun to do, we’ve got the perfect solution: make pipe popsicles in your house. You’ll need to start by freezing your pipes. Here’s how.

Pipe Freezing Process

1. Refrain from insulating your pipes, and go ahead and rip out any pre-existing pipe insulation. Pipe insulation will thwart all efforts to freeze the pipes in your home. Pay careful attention to the pipes that run along the outer walls of your home and through your cold basement–you definitely don’t want any insulation there.
2. When temperatures outside drop below freezing, immediately turn off all faucets in your home. Stop running all hot water.
3. Open your garage door to expose pipes in the garage to the coldest temperatures possible. Leave your garage door open day and night.
4. Consider leaving home and lowering the temperature on your thermostat to 40 degrees. Better yet, leave the furnace off altogether and then take off for a few days. Word of advice, don’t leave your cat or dog at home alone at this phase.

Fun Stuff to do When your Pipes Finally Freeze

Sooner of later your pipes will freeze. They’ll probably burst. If you’re lucky, you’ll have pillars of ice running through your kitchen, bathroom or basement. When this happens, here are a few suggestions for ways to play with your pipe-cicles.

1. Reenact that scene from A Christmas Story when that kid sticks his tongue to the pole and gets it stuck there.
2. Dance around the eruptions of ice spewing from your destroyed pipes with your 4 year old daughter all the while singing “Let It Go” from the Disney movie Frozen.
3. Carve the ice into a throne and insist that your spouse refer to you as “highness.”
4. Stand behind the bars of ice and pretend that you’ve been put in prison.
5. Shave the ice down and make snow cones.
6. Sculpt the ice into a model of Mount Rushmore.

Ok, yeah…in all seriousness, frozen pipes really aren’t fun at all. When your pipes freeze, they tend to burst. And then they thaw. And that’s when the real problems begin. Frozen pipes can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars in damage in a short amount of time. This winter, leave your faucets running at a drip or a light stream over night when temperatures are expected to drop below freezing. If your pipes do freeze, this will prevent them from bursting.

For more advice, check out our blog post on thawing frozen pipes. If you run into problems, call us any time. We’re here to help you thaw your pipes, fix a burst pipe, or hold the video camera as you dance around with your 4 year old while singing “Let it Go.”