Home › Frozen Pipes
A cold snap's caught the pipework — let's thaw it properly, without turning tonight's inconvenience into tomorrow's flood.
A tap's stopped running in the cold — what do I do? Turn the stopcock off first, as insurance, then warm the pipe gently — a hairdryer on low or towels soaked in warm water, working from the tap end back towards the blockage. Never a flame, never boiling water. If the pipe's already split, stop thawing and ring 020 4577 2888 instead.
Mild spells followed by a sudden hard frost are the real danger, not a steady deep freeze. Any pipe that's never been lagged is at risk the moment the temperature drops sharply.
Winters around Armagh tend to be more damp than bitterly cold, which is exactly what catches people out. A soft, mild fortnight lulls everyone into forgetting about pipework, then a hard frost drops down over the orchards and farmland overnight, and any pipe in a loft, garage, outbuilding or exposed external wall that was never insulated is suddenly frozen solid by morning.
The first sign is usually a tap that runs weakly or not at all, discovered first thing, often on the coldest morning of the week so far. If that's what's greeted you, take it as useful information rather than a surprise — I'd want to know which pipe, roughly where it runs, and whether the house has had this happen before.
Stopcock off, then gentle heat from the tap end inward. Patience beats speed here every time.
Never reach for a naked flame anywhere near a pipe, not a blowtorch, not a lighter, not even briefly. Sudden intense heat on one small section is one of the more reliable ways to crack a pipe that the cold alone hadn't yet managed to split.
Long exposed rural supply runs and unheated outbuildings, every time. Farms and country properties around the orchards feel this hardest each winter.
Out among the farms and orchard holdings towards Loughgall, Richhill and Hamiltonsbawn, I regularly see long stretches of supply pipe running overground or shallow-buried across a field or yard, feeding a farmhouse or a set of outbuildings, with nothing insulating them from the air above. Those runs are the first thing to freeze in any cold snap, sometimes every single winter if nothing's changed since the last one.
In the city itself, it's more often a specific weak point — a pipe in an unheated loft, a garage that shares a wall with the house but none of its warmth, or an external wall where the pipework was never quite deep enough. Either setting, the fix is the same principle: find the exposed run and cover it before the next frost, not during it.
Foam pipe lagging, fitted in autumn, is the cheapest plumbing job you'll ever pay for. A few pounds of foam sleeve against a burst pipe and a flooded kitchen isn't really a competition.
Foam pipe insulation slides straight over most standard pipe diameters and is sold by the metre in most hardware shops — it's genuinely a job you can do yourself on visible pipework in a loft, garage or under-sink cupboard in an afternoon. Focus on anything running through an unheated space first: lofts, garages, outbuildings, and any pipe against an external wall.
For pipes you can't easily reach, or a rural supply run that's been a repeat offender for years, that's where I'd come in properly — sometimes the fix is rerouting a pipe rather than just wrapping it, and it's worth having that conversation once rather than thawing the same pipe every January. Do it in October, not during the first hard frost, and you'll likely never read the rest of this page again.
A frozen pipe usually gives you nothing at all, or the faintest dribble, from one specific tap, often after a hard overnight frost, and the pipe itself may feel colder than the wall around it or show a thin frost line. An airlock tends to sputter and spit rather than run dry completely, and isn't tied to the weather. If in doubt, treat it as frozen and thaw gently.
No — that's one of the surest ways to turn a slow inconvenience into a burst pipe. The sudden temperature shock can crack a pipe that the frost alone hadn't managed to split yet, especially older metal pipework. Warm, not boiling, water and gentle heat sources are the safe route every time.
It's a pattern worth breaking rather than accepting. A pipe that froze once is very likely to freeze again in the same spot under the same conditions, because the underlying cause, usually missing insulation or an unusually exposed run, hasn't changed. An hour with some pipe lagging in autumn is far cheaper than another repeat next winter.
It's a genuinely useful trick for a pipe you know is vulnerable — a trickle of moving water is much slower to freeze solid than still water sitting in the pipe. It won't help a pipe that's already fully exposed to severe cold, but as one extra layer of protection on a cold night, it costs you almost nothing to try.
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