How to Prevent Frozen Pipes in Cold Weather
Frozen pipes are mostly a problem for climates colder than ours, and it's worth saying that plainly: a Lake Macquarie winter will not freeze the plumbing inside your walls. But on a clear July morning in the frost-prone suburbs away from the water, an exposed outdoor pipe, a garden tap or an uninsulated hot water line can genuinely ice up overnight, and a pipe only has to freeze once to split. The prevention is cheap and takes an afternoon.
Here are the measures that actually matter for the pipes at risk in a Hunter winter.
Insulate exposed pipes
The pipes that freeze here are the ones outdoors or under the house in the path of cold air: the run to the garden tap, the cold feed to an externally mounted hot water system, anything along a south-facing wall. Foam sleeves or insulation tape from any hardware store cover them for a few dollars a metre. Pipes inside the house don't need this; the exposed ones do.
Seal gaps where pipes enter the house
Gaps around pipe penetrations let cold air blow directly onto the pipe where it passes through the wall. Seal them with caulk or expanding foam. This also keeps out draughts, moisture and the occasional unwanted visitor, so it pays for itself beyond the plumbing.
Look after the hot water system
Winter is when marginal hot water systems fail, because they work hardest against the coldest inlet water. If your system lives outside, insulating the first metre of hot and cold lines off the unit is worthwhile. A system already showing its age going into winter is worth having looked at before the cold snap rather than after it fails on a frosty morning. Our guide to winterising your plumbing in Lake Macquarie covers this in more depth.
On genuinely frosty nights, run the vulnerable tap briefly
If a hard frost is forecast and you have a tap fed by an exposed run that has frozen before, letting it drip slowly overnight keeps water moving, and moving water is far less likely to freeze. This is a targeted trick for a known-vulnerable pipe, not something the whole house needs.
Disconnect garden hoses
A connected hose traps water in the tap and the pipe behind it. Before the frosty weeks, disconnect and drain hoses and store them off the ground. If a garden tap has split before, a frost-proof tap or an insulated tap cover is a permanent fix.
Know where your water meter is
If a pipe does freeze and split, the damage happens when it thaws and the water flows. Knowing where your meter and stop tap are, and checking the tap actually turns, means a burst becomes a controlled problem instead of a flooded one. It's a two-minute check worth doing before winter, not during a burst.
Cold snap found a problem? We're local
If a frost has left you with no water to one tap, a split pipe, or a hot water system that gave up on the coldest morning of the year, get in touch and tell us what happened. Frost damage announces itself as soon as things thaw, and the sooner it's looked at, the smaller the repair. More on keeping your plumbing protected is available too.