How to avoid frozen pipes: the short answer
To avoid frozen pipes, keep the cold parts of the house a little warm and wrap the pipes that run through them. Fit foam lagging to pipes in the loft, the garage and along outside walls, cover the cold water tank, empty the outside tap, and keep the heating on low during a hard frost, even if you are away. Then check your stop tap turns, so you can shut the water off quickly.
A freeze can also leave a leak you cannot see. A pipe that froze and split may not leak until the ice melts, and if it is buried or under a floor the water may never show. A meter check after the thaw, explained below, shows whether anything is still losing water. In East Anglia that matters most for rural homes on long supply pipes and for houses left empty in winter.
Where pipes freeze first
Pipes freeze where cold air reaches them and household heat does not. In the loft, that means pipes lying above the insulation, the cold water tank and the pipe that fills it. Next come pipes on outside walls, in garages, utility rooms and unheated extensions, and the outside tap. Under older houses with suspended timber floors, cold air moves through the gap below the boards and can freeze pipes there too.
Outside, a supply pipe laid to today's standards should be buried deep enough to stay clear of frost, but older pipes are not always so deep. A pipe can also be shallow where it rises into the house, climbs into an outbuilding, or feeds a garden tap or a stable trough. Homes on open ground, such as across the Fens and the Brecks, often see harder frosts than sheltered town streets.
Simple ways to protect them
Most of this is cheap and quick, and easier to do before the first hard frost than during one. Foam lagging, the split foam tubes sold for pipes, slips over a pipe and is held with tape at the joins. Leave no gaps at bends and valves, because a short bare section can freeze first. Do not lay loft insulation directly under the cold water tank, so a little warmth can rise into it from the rooms below.
If your boiler or thermostat has a frost setting, check that it works before you need it. Find your stop tap now and make sure it turns: under the kitchen sink is common, but it can be under the stairs, in a cupboard or near the front door. A stop tap that has not moved for years can be stiff, and a plumber can loosen or replace it.
Lag loft, garage and outside-wall pipes, bends included
Insulate the top and sides of the loft tank
Shut the outside tap's indoor valve, if fitted, and empty it
Keep the heating on a low setting in a hard frost
Open the loft hatch and sink cupboards on the coldest nights
Signs a pipe has frozen
The usual signs of frozen pipes are a tap that gives nothing, or a thin trickle, while other taps work. A toilet cistern that will not refill, a washing machine that cannot fill, or frost on a pipe you can see point the same way. If a condensing boiler stops in freezing weather, its condensate pipe outside may have frozen. That is a boiler problem rather than a leak, and the boiler's instructions usually explain what to do.
If a pipe has frozen but not split, close the stop tap and open the nearest tap it serves. Then warm the pipe slowly: a hairdryer on a low setting, or a hot water bottle held against it, is enough. Start nearest the tap and work back along the pipe. Keep flames and boiling water well away, and look for drips as it thaws, because a split often stays hidden until water moves again.
After the thaw: a meter check for hidden splits
Once everything has thawed and the taps run normally, check the meter. Turn off every tap and anything that uses water, such as the washing machine, dishwasher and outside tap, but leave the stop tap open. If you have a loft tank, let it finish refilling first. Note the numbers on the meter, leave everything off for an hour, and look again.
Any change means water is escaping somewhere. Close the inside stop tap and repeat the check. If your meter is outside and its numbers still creep up once the stop tap is closed, water is escaping from the buried pipe that brings it in from the meter, usually under the garden, path or drive. If the meter stops, the leak is indoors, on pipework after the stop tap. Watch the boiler gauge for a few days too: a split heating pipe shows up as pressure that keeps falling.
Buried pipes and outbuildings
On farms, smallholdings and homes with big gardens, water often runs well beyond the house: to a stable trough, a workshop, a garden tap or a holiday let across the yard. Those runs tend to freeze where they come up out of the ground. A split underground can leak for weeks before anyone notices a soft patch, grass that stays greener than the rest, or weak flow at the far end.
A leak on a buried pipe is found from the surface. We follow the pipe's route with a ground microphone, listening for the point where escaping water sounds loudest. On plastic pipe or a quiet leak, tracer gas takes over: a hydrogen and nitrogen mix that escapes at the split and is picked up above it. We want two separate methods pointing at one place before a spade goes in, so the spot is checked twice, then marked and photographed.
Long runs, and pipes whose route nobody knows, take longer to search. As on every job, we settle the price with you first, and it buys either half a day or a whole day on site. Mention it when you ring if the pipe crosses next door's ground or supplies a second house, because that changes how the testing is planned.
Empty homes and holiday lets in winter
A freeze does the most harm where nobody is there to notice. Second homes on the north Norfolk and Suffolk coasts, holiday lets around the Broads, houses between tenants and homes waiting for probate can stand empty for weeks, and a split pipe can run until the next visit. Many home insurance policies set conditions for empty homes, such as keeping heat on or turning the water off, so check yours before you leave.
Before you lock up, either leave the heating on a low or frost setting, or shut the stop tap and ask a plumber about draining down the system. When you come back, look and listen for water before you turn the supply back on, then do the meter check above. Landlords should ask tenants and agents to report low pressure or the sound of running water straight away.
If you find a leak
When water is actually escaping, shut the stop tap first, then switch off any wet electrics at the fuse box. If the stop tap makes no difference, the water may be from the heating, a loft tank or the supply pipe before the stop tap, and a plumber can isolate it. Photograph the damage before clearing up and tell your insurer early, before any repair is done.
If you cannot see where the water is going, or the meter check points to a hidden leak, ring us. We work from the surface to find it, check it with a second test, then mark and photograph the spot. Fixing the pipe is usually something we can do as well, with its own quote, and repairs are guaranteed for 3 months. The written report, with the location, methods, readings and photographs, can go with an insurance claim.