Frozen Pipes, Costly Lessons

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A vacant home. No furnace. Water service left on during a deep freeze. That combination set the stage for a preventable disaster—and a master class in how frozen pipes actually happen. We unpack the physics in plain language, explain where pipes freeze first, and share practical steps to thaw safely without turning your crawl space into a bonfire hazard.

We start with the scenario: a two-story house sitting at near-freezing indoor temperatures, ice visible at a bathroom faucet, and a listing team that didn’t winterize. From there, we dive into why insulation alone won’t save stagnant water when single-digit temperatures linger, how cold creeps through gaps around hose bibs and gas lines, and why closed vanity doors can create mini freezers on exterior walls. You’ll learn a careful thaw routine—crack a nearby faucet, inspect for bulges or splits, apply gentle, directed heat, and let the trickle do the work—plus the common mistakes that cause fires, flooding, or carbon monoxide risks.

We also look at the real estate implications. Turning on water in an unheated, vacant property can mean damaged plumbing, hidden leaks behind drywall, and costly concessions at closing. As licensed home inspectors, we outline when to pause an inspection, what it takes to come back after repairs, and how buyers and sellers can protect themselves. Finally, we share simple prevention habits: keep the thermostat at 55–56°F when away, open cabinets on exterior walls, seal penetrations, insulate vulnerable runs, and properly winterize hose bibs.

Subscribe for more straight talk on home systems, share this episode with someone who needs a winter wake-up call, and leave a review with your best prevention tip—what temp do you set when you travel?

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
All right, Laura.
We were at a house the otherday.
One of our specialists was at ahouse the other day, and
interesting scenario.
Yeah.
Well, this is a total failure.
By I I would say the listeningagent should know better.
The cellar failed taking oftaking care of their problem,
but we get there and it's beencold, but the pipes are all

(00:23):
frozen.

SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
So the water was left on.

SPEAKER_01 (00:27):
Well, yeah, the water's left on, and even
further all right.
I understand you didn't realizeit was going to get so cold.
Snuck up on you, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 (00:35):
But no, they've been talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 (00:37):
Yes, but if it you know, weather man's always
allowed to be off quite a bit.
But it's I still miss mycalling.
If the weather sneaks up when itgets cold and your pipe froze,
yeah, that's that sucks.
That can happen to anybody,really.
But when you don't have afurnace in your house, you never

(00:57):
had one installed, why in theworld would you ever have your
water service turned on, yourpipes filled with water, knowing
that it's winter time?
And then you're supposed to havea because there's no way you're
gonna heat the house because youhave not installed your furnace.
What kind of stupidity is this?

SPEAKER_02 (01:18):
Well, and and that you're having somebody come and
look at it because you'reselling the house and they want
to make sure stuff was doneright.
So you're gonna let all of thatgo and just turn on the water.

SPEAKER_01 (01:30):
Yeah.
So well, who turned on thewater?
I imagine the house was vacantfor a while.

SPEAKER_02 (01:35):
I think the seller or the listing agent did.
I either one or a conjunction.
I I have no clue.
I I don't know how that playedout.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43):
So listen, if it's all right, just in case you
don't know, water freezes at 32degrees Fahrenheit and at zero
degrees Celsius.
Just because it's 32 degreesoutside, usually that means your
your pipes inside house are notgoing to freeze because you have
insulation and you have afurnace that works that well

(02:05):
you've a furnace in the firstplace and it's and it's
functioning, so your stuff's notgonna freeze.
But when it gets near singledigits, that the colder it gets,
the more likely your pipes aregonna freeze because if the
water just sits there longenough and water and the cold
migrates, I'll say migrates in,but we know based upon law of

(02:25):
thermodynamics, heat tra heattravels from greater to lesser.
Laura's rolling her eyes becauseI know you can't see this, but
anyway, as it gets cold out, orthere's gaps around your uh your
siding where you have pipes comethrough the walls, your gas
pipes, whatever.

(02:46):
You have little gaps aroundthere, or where your ho your
hose bib goes out, gaps fromthere, cold air's gonna go in,
and if it's you know singledigits, yeah, you're probably
gonna freeze your pipes becausethat heat will I'll say cold
will transfer to the rest of thepipes and freeze them.

SPEAKER_02 (03:01):
Well, that's why we left our doors open to the
bathroom and the cabinet in theold house, because those old
that that area tended to getcolder.
It was under a crawl space, thesiding wasn't that perfect on
it, wind would come in.
So we kept stuff open.

SPEAKER_01 (03:20):
Well, and I did this house also, and we did our
battery.
I left the cabinet open becauseyou know, better safe to me than
to be sorry.
But if you if you find that yourwater's not flowing where it
flowed was flowing before, youmight have frozen pipes.
So I'm gonna go over this.

(03:40):
Here's our first all right.
If you have this, all right,something bad happened, but you
need to fall those things outsafely.
So the steps to thaw out.

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(04:12):
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SPEAKER_01 (04:16):
Frozen pies are first, whatever faucet is
closest to that.
Like let's say bathroom, youopen that faucet to help relieve
some pressure.
And you don't have it wide open,just a little bit.
Take pressure off, okay?
And then you're gonna have tofigure out where does this
freeze at?
And most likely it's gonna be uhdown in the crawl space, maybe,

(04:40):
or base marriage, which doesn'tkeep us warm.

SPEAKER_02 (04:43):
Over near the foundation walls.

SPEAKER_01 (04:45):
Yes.
So what you then you need towarm that pipe up.
You're well, you're gonnaexamine it first.
If you look at that pipe and yousee some splits in it, you need
to make sure the water is shutoff to that because it's if
that's gonna thaws, it's gonnaspray water.

SPEAKER_02 (05:02):
So you don't need to put something underneath it.

SPEAKER_01 (05:04):
Yes.
But if it's not bulging cracked,get it warm.
Some of the suggestions arehairdryer, heat gun.
If you have one of those, youcan take like uh hot, you know,
towels, fill you know, come withhot water and wrap them around.
You don't have to repeat thatrepeatedly.
There's that will that will loseheat pretty quick.

(05:27):
Heat tape.
You can do heat if you have heattape already, you can put that
around there, but you need towarm those up and then keep an
eye on it.
And then hopefully what's gonnahappen is that faucet that you
had on will slowly startdripping water.
And when it does that, don'thave the faucet wide open, keep
it slightly open, because if ifit's all the way, all that ice

(05:52):
may loosen up, flow towards yourfaucet, and then make like an
ice dam itself and block theflow.
So let's do that.
Let it just trickle slowly.
So it's like you should have toprevent the freezing in the
first place, but just let ittrickle slowly, and then that
heated water, well, I should saynon-frozen water, will thaw that
ice inside that pipe, andeventually you'll have full

(06:14):
flow.
But one of the things you do notwant to do, and I have seen
this, Laura, in a crawl space.

SPEAKER_02 (06:20):
Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 (06:21):
Up at Indian Lake, of course.

SPEAKER_02 (06:23):
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (06:24):
They you're uh go to a gr uh car garage and they have
those gasoline, it looks like ajet engine, it's shooting flames
out here.

SPEAKER_02 (06:33):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (06:34):
I've seen one of those in a crawl space.

SPEAKER_02 (06:36):
Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 (06:37):
Yeah, no.
Do not use open flames to thatwould be bad.
That's how you start fires toyour house.
And if you use like an electricuh portable heater, make sure it
has clearance around it and keepan eye on that.

SPEAKER_02 (06:51):
And don't use a propane one because the
byproducts of that will causehigh humidity and can also make
you sick.

SPEAKER_01 (07:00):
It can from carbon monoxide.
It can, but you gotta.
Alright, if my pipe frozen, I'mnot worried about the humidity
of my crawl space.
I'm worried about getting mypipes falls.
They don't burst.

SPEAKER_02 (07:12):
Well, let me rephrase that.
Don't leave well, I don't know.
Would it be better to leave iton then and keep your bite pipes
from bursting and use that tokeep the the pipes from bursting
in that room?

SPEAKER_01 (07:23):
A propane heater?
Yeah.
They make those keroseneheaters.
If you need to and you need tokeep that room warmer warm, you
know, help prevent freezing.
Yes.
Prevention is always better thanuh the cures, really.

SPEAKER_02 (07:41):
Was the old saying.

SPEAKER_01 (07:42):
That's what Ben Franklin would say, yes.
So I think that's really it, butit's just really weird that it's
not weird that it froze.

SPEAKER_02 (07:50):
It's weird you might have an HVAC system in it.

SPEAKER_01 (07:53):
But you don't even have a heater, and you for some
reason thought that was okay toleave the pipes filled with
water and keep the water serviceon it.
It makes no sense.
The only way I can think thatmaybe that's okay.
You're a seller, you moved outof state, you live in Arizona,
you don't notice the cold downthere, you didn't get the news

(08:14):
it's gonna be cold up here, andtotally slipped your mind.

SPEAKER_02 (08:18):
But even then, the agent, that agent should have
known.

SPEAKER_01 (08:21):
The agent is a real estate professional who surely
got the house ready for theinspection and just help.
I mean, they're not maintenance,but they should they should know
better to not let the house getjunk.
Because now the agent who wantsa commission, which I makes
sense.
I understand that.
Well, your commission is gonnago down a couple thousand
dollars if those pipes aredamaged.

(08:42):
I mean, it's not I imagine thatwould be part of the
negotiations, or or the sellerhas to cough up the money to get
those pipes fixed, assumingthey're damaged.

SPEAKER_02 (08:56):
I and it got based on what you saw, they probably
are.

SPEAKER_01 (09:00):
Well, yeah, there's an ice cycle for forcing its way
down the uh faucet in thebathroom, which tells me that
whole pipe is froze, not justone little spot down in the
basement or a crawl space.

SPEAKER_02 (09:12):
Well, the house the house itself was 30.

SPEAKER_01 (09:16):
Like what three degrees inside the house?

SPEAKER_02 (09:18):
Yeah, like surface temperature of stuff in the
house was 30.
So the house was cold.

SPEAKER_01 (09:26):
So who it's hard to tell.
Well, it doesn't have a furnace,so it's not like it got cold one
night in maybe one area.
It's been extremely cold for acouple days in a row.

SPEAKER_02 (09:36):
It's stayed cold.

SPEAKER_01 (09:38):
So it's there's there's good potential for lots
of damage in the house,unfortunately.
But our inspector said he wouldonce they get it fixed, he'll go
back out and finish up theinspection for them because he
doesn't want the person gettingscrewed over.
Right.
The buyer.
Maybe the buyer knows furnacestotally fine with that, but I

(10:00):
don't think they'd be fine onfrozen damaged pipes.

SPEAKER_02 (10:03):
I would not, unless I was a plumber, and even then
I'd be asking for money off forthe uh price of the materials.

SPEAKER_01 (10:10):
Yeah, and I don't know the house, but the house
was two stories.
You have to I mean, do they getdamaged up inside the ceiling
behind the wall?
You have a lot of drywall damagepotential or work that has to be
done, or get I mean, maybe youcut the drywall out neatly so
you can fix the pipe and put itback up.

SPEAKER_02 (10:28):
I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 (10:29):
Potentially, but you need to find it first.
Yes.
So that was a story we had theother day.
So yeah, take care of your houseduring the winter, bacon or not.
Still an investment.
Yeah, well, you shouldn't.
Here's why whenever we left thehouse or vacation or like that,
which is not very often, but weI don't want the house below 56
degrees.

(10:50):
Just give a little cushion forheat.
I don't ever want to have itcompletely shut off.
No, even during the summer, no,I don't want it getting so hot
and humid that we get moldgrowing or anything like that.
Like, nope, keep the keep the ACon so the humidity stays lower,
and during the winter, keep theheat on at least 55, 56 degrees,

(11:10):
so at least you're you're gonnahelp prevent pipes bursting.
And hose bibs, you shouldwinterize those already by now.
Which means you shut you shutthe water off, hose
disconnected, and then you gotsome uh insulation cover
insulated cover on the outsideof the hose bib so it's not
directly exposed to the outside.

(11:31):
So that's it.
All right, everybody.
Bye bye.
Always get it inspected.