One thing in my life is certain: Every single time the words “freeze warning” or “freeze watch” comes across the weather forecast, my husband will not be home. What does that mean? Simply that I had to learn how to wrap our pipes to prevent them from freezing in the cold.
11 years ago we had no clue what to do to prepare our home for our first winter. Since we live in South Texas, it’s not something that anyone really worries about until that occasional hard freeze hits. You can laugh all you want but when the hard freeze warning comes across the forecast people get off work early, raid all the grocery store shelves and bunker down for the entire 20 hours max that the hard freeze will last.
Houston gets crazy when the weather drops below 60. When the weather gets around 30 degrees, people truly loose it. When this happens, you won’t find any products to winterize your home left on the store shelves.
For the first 6-8 years of our marriage and new home ownership my dad would send me an email every time winter weather was forecasted that said:
Daughter (he never uses my name),
Don’t forget to wrap your outside pipes and faucets tonight. It’d also be a good idea to leave water dripping or your kitchen cabinet doors open a bit. You don’t want to deal with a busted pipe.
XOXO,
Dad
Every single year. But you know what? It helped. Because every single year it sent me into a tailspin of bundling up, gathering supplies and heading out into the frozen Houston tundra to prepare the outside of the house for winter. (We’re not used to cold weather, remember?) Side note: It’s so warm here that it is not worth keeping the house winterized all winter long. We’ll have a week of cold weather and then a week in the 70’s when you probably need to reach those water faucets to water tropical plants. 11 years later I’ve figured out a pretty simple and quick way to wrap our outside faucets using supplies that we already have on hand. This is a great way to wrap faucets in a mild or warm climate. If you’re truly in the frozen tundra, you need more! Today if you need help figuring out how to winterize your outside faucets, don’t worry – I’ve got your back Jack. You only need a few supplies to wrap your outside faucets. For every faucet you’ll need an old shirt or towel from the rag pile, large ziplock bag or plastic shopping bag and wide tape such as duct tape or packing tape. I have used painters tape in a pinch or tied it with string. That’s it. I used an old holey shirt that I pulled out of the soon to be rag pile.
I folded the shirt in half lengthwise which made the width of hang over the faucet by about two inches. It isn’t rocket science, you just need it to hang down over the outside edge whiles still covering the part of the pipe that goes into the wall. The neater you can be in wrapping the shirt, the easier it will be to finish off with a bag and tape.
Next you just keep wrapping the shirt or towel around the pipe. Make sure that you tuck the bottom edge piece (the one hanging down over the faucet) inside the shirt as your wrap it up. Try to do one more wrap where youcan cover the outside edge of the faucet with another layer of fabric
Once you have that wrapped well, slide the plastic bag over the fabric and push the edge of it all the way to wall. Using the tape do one messy wrap around the bag just to hold it in place.
After you have the tape holding it in place, go back and wrap it entirely with tape. If you’re low on tape than just wrap it enough to hold it in place and don’t worry about looks.
Taa-Daa! An easy no cost way to protect your outdoor faucets in a freeze!
Now it’s time to go inside and prepare your refrigerator for the possibility of losing power. Just because you lose power doesn’t mean you need to lose all of your food. Check out this post on How to Prepare Your Fridge / Freezer for a Power Outage.
Now that your faucets are protected, make this cute Let it Snow mug using this tutorial and free cut file.
Thanks Bobbie for this article.
Thank you, I am going to wrap mine outside right now, wish me luck! NE Texas is going to get near freezing tonight.
I’m glad you found this post then! I hope it helps!
Thanks.so much… my husband recently took a job where I’m home a lot by myself…he insulated everything but the spiket coming up from the ground. I just did this and I’m grateful to you.
Thank you! I’m so thankful that I could be of help.
This is a great idea for handling cold faucets at the last minute, but want to share a bit of Colorado knowhow–we’ll see minus five this weekend. We’ve got family in Houston (Woodlands), but I only see them in summer.
My Dad also calls or texts me reminders of this sort–i.e. again just now–so I’m smiling as I identify with you. A buddy just bought his first home a few months ago, and I’ve been trying to save him Homeowner Heartache with little nuggets of Dad’s advice–found your page from a search of “winter faucet cover” so I can email him persuasive pictures.
My (eventual) point:
Styrofoam hardware store faucet covers are just a few bucks and small enough to live on a basement shelf in summer. Once you buy a set you’re set! The elastic only lasts a few years, but not spending several minutes wrestling frozen sticky tape is unequivocally worth buying them again. A couple weeks ago I installed mine in the snow and the dark (front and back) in under two minutes.
As a bonus they’re more quickly removable/replaceable than tape when your winter warms enough to water something.
Again, I’d ruin my best shirt before enduring another leak, but if you can reach Lowe’s in advance, spending four (six?) bucks is easily worth its weight in gold–ounce of prevention and all that. I know this sorta goes against your crafty theme, but if I can save one person a flooded basement I’ll risk toppling convention. 🙂
Love the site, Bobbie (tag line is the BEST); hope this helped. Happy holidays!
Thank you Brian! Unfortunately since we never get cold weather, I never think of it until it’s here. The stores here stock very little products such as that and they are always sold out. I guess I need to use Amazon Prime!
Thank you, Bobbie. And thank you for the giggles I got when I read the name of your blog.
A fellow Clumsy Crafter.
I love clumsy crafters!
Loved this! I live in Mongomery, north of Houston, and you are so right on how you explain the reaction to really cold weather around here. Lol. Nice info on using household materials last minute. Thanks!
*montgomery
Thanks! I’m glad the cold weather has gone on for now!
I dunno how old this article is but, we have a freeze advisory in effect here in SC, my friend and I got a tshirt, a ziploc, and zip ties. Done! Saved me 5 bucks. Thanks!
I’m glad it helped!
West Central GA. Thanks you!!! Just like you my hubby just pulled a 15 hr. shift due to snow/ice
on his off day. I have been forced to be “the man about the house” on MANY occasions. I didn’t ever do the plastic bag but have it all out now & just need pliers to disconnect the hose. Thank you for acknowledging all
of us that just GET ER DONE.
I hope it worked out great for you and was easy!
Awesome! Just what I needed. I’m in a suburb of Houston and everybody’s going nuts. Not really. Harvey pretty much numbed is from freaking out. Anyway, this is just what I needed. I was worried because I do t have the fancy styrofoam thingies. Not to worry! I have old shirts, ziplocks and tape! God bless!
Thank you. I live in Houston and get what you’re saying about Harvey. If we made it through that, we can make it through a hard freeze.
Thanks – just went and covered up everything…supposed to be 25 degrees here in Clear Lake City in the next day or two!
I miss the warm weather! Stay warm!