Reminder: Avoid frozen and burst water pipes and huge plumbing bills.
Just a reminder for everyone to consider letting one of your faucets drip during this long cold snap. In Kentucky, we're predicted to have below freezing weather all through this week, with the worst on Tuesday night. Especially if you have pipes under your house, it's best to use the faucet furthest from where your water service enters your home.
For many years, I place a bucket under our bathtub faucet and adjust the cold tap for a very slow drip (double-checking it periodically) and it does the trick. The purpose of the bucket is so I can see the drip rate easily. Our water likes to freeze out in the meter pit first so I also started placing a garbage can lid over the meter cover with a brick on it to insure it doesn't blow away.
It takes time for the ground to freeze to buried pipe depth but the process is sped up by wind and lower temperatures.
Don't forget to run your cars a bit more often in this cold, as extreme temperatures are hard on weak batteries. Always watch your car's temperature as is heats up so you can shut it off quickly in case there's an ice plug in the cooling system.
This is the voice of one who learned all these things the hard way, LOL........
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I live in New England and have never had to take such precautions, even when it is a sustained -10°F or so outside. My house was built in 1961 with a full basement to protect the pipes and no plumbing is run in an outside wall. The kitchen sink lines actually run through the cabinet below rather than in the wall. The only plumbing that penetrates an outside wall uses the freeze proof faucets required by code up here.
Last edited Sat Feb 13, 2021, 08:46 PM - Edit history (1)
It's the Southerners that have to worry where pipes are only 3 or 4-ft. deep. That's who I was aiming the post toward because this Arctic blast is unusually to the South and for long enough duration for the ground to freeze quite deep.
I recall traveling to service jobs up North and had never seen homes with "skirts" around their foundations....
At least around here, that faucet you posted a photo of is called a wall hydrant because it functions just like a fire hydrant!
A lot of homes here (North-central KY) have crawl spaces like mine and are poorly insulated. Most were built before energy efficiency became a huge deal and electricity and natural gas are fairly cheap here.
KY
KY.........
Here in North Florida, in the late 70s we had a really cold winter. We had several days with temps in the ten degree range. At the time I was a plumber who was working with his tools. Of course, damn near everything in Tallahassee froze, bursting pipes like crazy.
I went to one house, in the suburbs, that had enough broken pipes for it to take me seven hours to fix. I got everything back online, and before leaving, I had a chat with the owner. It went something like this, "It is going to be as cold tonight as it was last night. You can avoid it freezing up again if you will leave the water in the two tubs at opposite ends of the house dripping." I then and showed him where and how much.
The next morning, I was dispatched to the same man's house again. Everything that I had fixed had frozen and split again. I spent another seven or so hours doing all of the repairs. When I finished, I had the same speech with him about leaving the faucets dripping, to which he replied, "Well, running that water cost a lot of money." I told him with a smug smile, "I will see you tomorrow."
If he thought that water was expensive, I would have loved to see his face when he was billed for 14 hours of a plumber and helper. 
The idea, in areas that have pipes that are exposed to the weather, is to keep enough 60 degree water from under the streets flowing through the system to keep the piping system above 32 degrees. You folks in the North don't have to worry about it because your building codes and plumbers put it in with sub-freezing temps in mind. I suspect your worst plumbing danger is if you lose heat in the house, and it got below freezing inside, then you would need to resort to the Southern dripping strategy.
Since they come out of different pipes. 
