The Texas Freeze Survival Guide for Your Plumbing

Texas plumbing does not fail because Texas gets cold. It fails because Texas gets cold rarely, then stays cold for days, in houses built to shed heat rather than hold it. This is the overview page: what a hard freeze does to a Texas house, when in the year to expect one, and which guide to open at each stage. Every section hands off to a longer guide on that one job.

Why a Texas freeze is a plumbing event

Freeze advice written for colder states assumes the water lines live in heated space. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) describes the warm-climate case directly: in areas that are typically warmer, including much of the southern United States, plumbing along exterior walls is prevalent. Its instruction is to make sure pipes in hard-to-reach places like attics, crawl spaces, and along exterior-facing walls are properly insulated. On a slab-foundation house with the supply lines run overhead, that list covers most of the water system: lines up into an unconditioned attic and back down inside walls, plus hose bibs, an irrigation backflow preventer, and pool equipment sitting outdoors year round.

The second difference is duration. One cold night mostly chills the attic. A freeze that holds below 32 degrees for days pulls the temperature of the whole structure down with it, and if the power fails, the heat that was protecting the interior lines goes with it. February 2021 is the measured version of that sentence.

What February 2021 did

Winter Storm Uri is the reference event. The numbers are worth knowing because they explain why Texas plumbers, restoration firms, and insurers read a freeze forecast the way they do.

• DFW Airport spent 139 consecutive hours at or below freezing, from 5 p.m. on February 13 to noon on February 19, and fell to 2 degrees below zero on February 16. Waco ran 205 consecutive hours at or below freezing, a new record there.
• Across central Texas, including Austin and Waco, six to nine consecutive days of freezing temperatures broke records for the longest freezing streak in the state's recorded history, and nearly 10 million people were without power at the peak of the outage.
• The coast froze too. On the coldest morning of the event, the National Weather Service office in Houston recorded the city of Houston down to 13 degrees and College Station down to 5, and listed broken pipes among the storm's impacts.
• Insurers reported 456,531 claims to the Texas Department of Insurance as of March 31, 2021, with an ultimate payout of $8.2 billion expected. TDI attributed the property damage to freezing pipes, fallen tree limbs, the weight of ice, sleet, and snow, and other related causes. Residential property was 81.5 percent of those claims, at an average incurred loss of about $11,500.
• By the July 31, 2021 update, the count had grown to 500,196 claims and roughly $10.3 billion in estimated losses, 85 percent of them residential.

Uri was not a normal Texas winter, and the next front will probably not look like it. It is still the clearest measurement available of what a long freeze does to warm-climate plumbing at scale.

When the Texas freeze season runs

At DFW the normal first freeze is November 22 and the normal last freeze is March 12, on the 1991 to 2020 normals. Those are North Texas dates and every other Texas city runs on its own, but December through February is the stretch to be ready in wherever you are: Uri arrived in mid-February, and NCEI calls it the coldest winter storm for Texas since December 1989.

Two National Weather Service product families matter to your pipes. A Winter Storm Watch is issued when conditions are favorable for a significant winter storm event, and a Winter Storm Warning for the event itself: snow, ice, sleet, blowing snow, or a combination. A Freeze Watch is issued when there is potential for significant, widespread freezing temperatures within the next 24 to 36 hours, and a Freeze Warning when temperatures are forecast to go below 32 degrees for a long period. Since October 1, 2024, hard freeze watches and warnings have been folded into the plain Freeze Watch and Freeze Warning, and the old wind chill products became Extreme Cold watches and warnings and the Cold Weather Advisory. Do not wait to hear the words "hard freeze." The watch, roughly a day out, is the cue to do the outdoor work, not the warning.

The sequence, stage by stage

1. Before the front. Disconnect hoses, cover hose bibs, wrap attic and garage lines, shut down and insulate the irrigation backflow preventer, and check pool freeze protection. The full checklist is in how to prepare your pipes before a Texas freeze.
2. Find your main shutoff while it is dry and light out. A house on a slab has no basement to search, so the valve is usually at the meter box by the curb, in the garage, or where the service line enters the house. IBHS puts knowing where your home's water shut-off valve is located and how to operate it on its pre-winter list. Where the shutoff valve is in a Texas home walks the likely spots in order.
3. During the freeze. Keep a slow drip going on the faucets fed by exposed pipe. The City of Frisco puts that at five drips per minute and notes that moving water helps prevent pipes from freezing during extended cold. Keep checking the taps while the cold holds: the American Red Cross says that if you turn on a faucet and only a trickle comes out, you should suspect a frozen pipe.
4. If a pipe freezes but has not burst. Leave the faucet open and warm the frozen section. The American Red Cross lists four heat sources: an electric heating pad wrapped around the pipe, an electric hair dryer, a portable space heater kept away from flammable materials, or towels soaked in hot water. If you cannot locate or reach the frozen area, or cannot thaw it, it says to call a licensed plumber. The frozen-pipe guide covers how to find the frozen section and thaw it without making the split worse.
5. If a pipe bursts. Water off at the main first. Do not wade into standing water to reach the electrical panel: the CDC says to call an electrician to switch it off instead. Then the water heater off, then photos and video before any cleanup. Burst pipe: the first 30 minutes is the order of operations, including the gas and electrical steps in full.
6. The insurance claim. The Texas Department of Insurance states the general rule: a home or renters policy covers sudden and accidental water damage, gradual leaks and seepage usually are not covered, flood needs a separate policy, and your insurer may deny the claim if you do not protect the property. Your policy decides your claim, so read the declarations page. Does insurance cover burst pipes in Texas goes through the wrinkles, including why the failed pipe itself is often not covered when the damage is.
7. Drying out. The EPA says that if wet or damp materials are dried 24 to 48 hours after a leak or spill, in most cases mold will not grow. That clock is why water damage after a freeze is its own guide rather than a paragraph.

Two trades, not one

A freeze failure usually needs two separate companies. A plumber repairs the pipe, and in Texas that is licensed work: the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners publishes a free license lookup, so you can check a company before it starts. Drying the structure is separate work with separate equipment. Texas licenses no trade called restoration, so there is no state license to ask a restoration firm for: what can be checked is a TDLR mold remediation license, where the job needs one, and voluntary IICRC certification. How we verify sets out exactly what we check on each side.

Every Texas plumbing company listed here is checked against the state registry before it appears. If a front is already on the forecast, save the page for your city now: verified plumbers in Houston, verified plumbers in Dallas, restoration firms in Houston, or every Texas city we cover.