AVOID PIPE FREEZE
Have you been winterizing yet? Umm yeah sure 🙂 An essential priority on your winterization checklist you may forget- do you take care of your outdoor hose faucet?
Our leaky hose spicket
What do I mean you ask? Do you always remember to turn off the water valve to the outdoor hose spicket before the freezing cold temperatures come? Shhh….we forget sometimes too!!
Our shut-off valve for our outdoor hose spicket
Or perhaps you add an outdoor faucet cover on the outside over the hose spicket. Shhh….we NEVER do this!! This pic is from Amazon because we don’t even own one!
FaucetBeanie Outdoor Faucet Cover from AMAZON
There may have been years you remembered this winterizing ‘TO DO’ and years you forgot, but in either case, everything was fine and you dodged the dreaded pipe freeze….OR SO YOU THOUGHT. However, if you have a leaky hose spicket, then it is quite possible your spicket had undergone some freeze damage at some point in time without you knowing. AND….a leaky hose spicket is a problem and quite common. By doing this one thing, you can remove “Remember to turn off that darn valve!” off your Winterization TO DO LIST forever!
A Freeze-less outdoor hose faucet
SWITCH IT OUT TO A FREEZE-LESS OUTDOOR FAUCET! I bet many of you didn’t know this even existed. We didn’t until a few months ago. We had a leaky hose spicket, so Ed decided to switch to a freeze-less to prevent any pipe problems from occurring. You have to check these hose spickets out. Ed got this at either Home Depot or Lowes. We are not paid by anyone to promote these. Ed was just excited to come across this and wanted to share!
If DIY plumbing may be a problem? Call someone to do it! You may not think it is a big deal but let me just show you this old pic from when my kids were smaller.
We were out of town visiting family and I needed a Christmas pic for our Christmas card. I suddenly saw one of the townhouses on our walk that had a bush with icicles all over it. There hadn’t been any ice storm. It hadn’t even rained in a week!! We realized their leaky outdoor hose spicket had burst on a freezing day because they had forgotten to care for their hose faucet.
Nope not visiting Canada here!
Her little karupped look in her eye I know :)… Runs in the family, hehe!
Of course I couldn’t miss an opportunity to take advantage of this frozen bush especially when my kids just so happened to actively be eating candy canes…It was a perfect setting for a Christmas Card! Do you see that pic.. you guys, am I right? However, Ed thought differently and said I was taking advantage of this poor persons misfortune….blah blah…”they may be out of town blah…get in touch blahblah and they have no idea blahblahblah spicket burst”. “But Ed, my Christmas card!” HAHA …Alright, he was right, maybe I was being a little cold-hearted. Funny thing was, after I hurried them into position behind E’ds back to snap a quick pic, there was another family right behind us who thought it was a great idea. baHA! This mess got more play than Santa and the fire engine down the street where we were actually going. OK ok…We tried to see if they were home. Unfortunately though, no one was there, we were out of town ourselves and there was nothing we could do to help this homeowner out. Wow, that must have sucked to come home to that!
That same homeowner has just now googled about frozen spickets, is now reading this story, and sees their frozen bush…….. “Oh thaaaat little B”!
I’m sorry, forgive me whomever it may concern…..just couldn’t resist! I did get the BEST Christmas card picture out of it that year!!!!:):) Ed is shaking his head at me right now.
So here we are. A freezeless outdoor spicket would prevent any horrible mess like this one inside or outside of the house just because you forgot to turn a valve. Look at the 2 types of hose spickets. The left is the old hose spicket and the right is the new improved Freezeless.
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- OLD
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- FREEZELESS
Inside these outdoor spickets, there is an inner valve mechanism. When you turn a regular old hose spicket on and off, this inner shut-off valve is opening and closing OUTSIDE of your house. This means that the water flow is stopped and under pressure at the valve point, and with it being outside and exposed to the elements, it is more likely to freeze. Look at these 2 pictures again with my drawn arrows.
Our old spicket
On the freeze-less type, the inner shut-off valve is farther down the pipe purposely placed to be in the inside of your heated house.
FREEZELESS
I will spare you all from the “exciting” diy plumbing installation pics! 😉 Please comment with any installation questions since Ed did install it and I do have those pictures if you need to see something. If you own a new home, it is possible you already have a freezeless hose faucet but it is worth looking at it to see what you have. Each house is different so installation may vary considering the type of pipe and where the shut-off valve is in your house. However, I wanted to show how it is a pretty simple switch out that can be attached to all of your existing plumbing.
NOTE: The new freezeless 1/2 inch outdoor faucet has a slightly bigger diameter which may involve drilling a bigger hole through your cinder-block(or wood). However, the pipe connections are all 1/2 inch and will connect fine to your existing 1/2 inch pipes.
Here is the before and after on the outside of the house:
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- Old spicket BEFORE
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- new freezeless AFTER
Inside the house – the before and AFTER the switch to freeze-less: See…It is a pretty seamless switch.
-
- BEFORE
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- AFTER with freezeless
Every year, our mantra- “OMG- it was 20 degrees last night and we forgot to turn off the hose spicket valve!!!” After this switch to a freeze-less hose spicket I feel like I can rest easy knowing that we won’t be waking up to a mess in the morning or when we come back from vacation. 
After seeing the real consequence of a frozen pipe freeze, as much as this Christmas pic continues to make me giggle, it won’t ever haunt me thinking it could possibly happen to me. Although after writing this post…..thoughts of possible revenge from these angry homeowners may be slightly daunting :/ Until our next project….
Happy winterizing!!
K. Rupp
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Thanks for the reminder. We haven’t winterized yet. I know, not good of us. I like that there is a freeze-less option. I never knew that. Thanks for this tip! Your picture is so cute for your Christmas cards! 🙂
Thanks so much Natalie! Yes, it is good for people to know…it really isn’t advertised at all. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
I didn’t know that such a product existed! Of course in south Texas we don’t get too many hard freezes! Thanks for sharing at The Blogger’s Pit Stop! Roseann from http://www.thisautoimmunelife.com
I know we didn’t either! Around here temperatures are sort of drastic. 70 degrees can drop to 30 degrees the next day often in the Fall and Spring. It is easy to forget when you are blindsided like that! HAHA. Sounds like I would love South Texas! I like to be warm:) Thanks for stopping by Roseann!
This is such a great reminder to all of us. I just moved to the cold temps but I know it can get really cold. Thanks for that timely reminder.
Oh great! Yes, that one is easy to forget and can result in a home fiasco:) Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Great tips! Thanks for sharing at Vintage Charm!
Thanks for stopping by Cecilia!