What actually breaks when pipes freeze in Ellis County?
The same short list every time, and February 2021 proved it across every neighborhood between here and Waxahachie. Anything outside the heated envelope splits first: hose bibs on an exterior wall, the supply run crossing an unconditioned attic, lines in a garage wall, the pipe feeding an irrigation backflow. Interior lines behind conditioned drywall rarely fail unless the power stays off long enough for the house itself to freeze.
What splits the pipe isn’t the ice. It’s the pressure trapped between the ice plug and a closed faucet downstream, which is why a dripping faucet during a hard freeze genuinely helps, and why the break often shows up somewhere other than the coldest spot.
You usually don't find out until the thaw. A hose bib that split at 9°F stays sealed by its own ice, then pours into the wall the afternoon it warms up.
Why we won't quote a freeze repair over the phone
Because we don’t know how many splits there are yet, and neither do you. A house that froze hard rarely breaks in one place. We fix the one you found, bring the system back to pressure, and sometimes that’s when the second one announces itself.
So: a firm number for the break we can see, and no promise it’s the only one until the system is thawed and holding pressure. A shop that quotes your whole freeze job sight-unseen is either padding it or about to have an awkward conversation on day two.
On getting a line open: it depends on the pipe and where it sits. We bring heat — a space heater on an enclosed run, a hair dryer on something we can reach — and often that thaws it enough to find out what it’s going to do. What we won’t do is put an open flame near pipe inside a wall. That’s how a freeze call becomes a fire call.
Which pipe do I have, and does it change the repair?
It changes it a lot. Two of the materials below we'd replace rather than patch, and knowing which is in your walls tells you whether this is a repair or a bigger conversation.
| Material |
Where you'll find it |
How it fails |
Patch or replace |
| Copper |
Supply lines, most Red Oak homes |
Freeze splits; pinholes with age |
Patch the split; watch the run |
| Galvanized steel |
Supply in pre-1960s houses |
Rusts closed from inside; pressure drops before it leaks |
Replace — threading rusted pipe starts the next leak |
| Polybutylene |
Gray plastic supply, roughly 1978–1995 |
Goes brittle, splits without warning, often at fittings |
Replace — one split means the rest is the same age |
| Cast iron |
Drain, pre-mid-1980s Red Oak and Waxahachie |
Scales inward, then rusts through the bottom |
Section or full run, depending on the camera |
| PVC |
Drain, mid-1980s on |
Cracks or pulls apart at a joint as the slab moves |
Patch the joint or section |
Can you repair just the bad section, or does the whole run go?
Most of the time, just the section. We cut back to sound pipe either side of the failure, splice in new, and pressure-test before anything closes up. On a freeze split in copper or a cracked PVC joint, that's the whole job.
The exceptions are the two we’d replace outright. Threading into galvanized that’s rusted for sixty years tends to create the next leak within arm’s reach of the one we fixed. A polybutylene split at one fitting says every identical fitting is the same age and brittleness, so patching buys months. If the failure is on a pressurized line under your slab, that’s plumbing leak repair, where a reroute often beats digging.
What do I do the night a hard freeze is coming?
Pull the garden hoses off the hose bibs and cover them; a connected hose traps water in the bib and gives ice somewhere to start. Open cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls. Leave a slow drip at the fixture farthest from where water enters the house. The bibs themselves, and the yard line feeding them, sit under outdoor plumbing repair.
And find your main shutoff before you need it in the dark — that valve is the difference between a repair and a claim. Water actively running is an emergency plumbing call at (469) 505-8362.