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Home & Garden · Plumbing & freeze

Freeze prep for a North Texas house: a checklist

Hard freezes are rare here, which is why so few houses are ready for one. What to do in November, what to do the night before, and what to do if a pipe goes anyway.

November 13, 2026

Most North Texas winters pass without a freeze long enough to hurt a pipe. The ones that do arrive with a day or two of warning, and the jobs that matter take an afternoon. Do the first list once, early in the season, and the second whenever a hard freeze is in the forecast.

Once, before the first cold snap

  • Find your private shutoff valve and make sure it turns. Dallas Water Utilities says it is usually near an outside faucet close to the house, and on some lots near the irrigation valves by the property line. Older homes may have a buried valve with an iron handle shaped like an upside-down "L". If the house has no private cut-off valve, DWU recommends having one installed.
  • Disconnect, drain and put away garden hoses, and fit insulated covers over the outside faucets.
  • Wrap exposed pipes in the attic, garage, crawl space and along exterior walls.
  • Close or cover foundation vents on a pier-and-beam house.
  • Leave the water meter box lid on. Fort Worth Water notes that the lid is what keeps the meter itself from freezing.

When a hard freeze is forecast

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension puts the danger point for exposed pipes at about 20°F, and suggests taking precautions any time temperatures are forecast to fall below freezing.

  • Let faucets drip. A slow trickle of both hot and cold water on the faucets most exposed to the cold — usually the ones on exterior walls — keeps water moving through the lines.
  • Open the cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls so the house’s heat reaches the pipes.
  • Going away for a few days? DWU’s advice is to turn the water off at your private valve and drain the outside faucets before you leave.

If a pipe freezes or bursts

  • If one faucet will not run, check every other faucet in the house — AgriLife notes that where one pipe has frozen, others often have too.
  • If a pipe bursts, shut the water off at your private valve first. Everything between the meter and the house is the owner’s plumbing; the city is responsible for the meter and the lines on the street side of it.
  • In Dallas, if you cannot stop the water at your own valve, call 3-1-1 and ask for an emergency shutoff at the meter. Other cities run their own emergency lines — find yours on your water bill before you need it.
  • Then call a licensed plumber. Burst lines in an attic or wall are rarely a do-it-yourself repair.

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