Did you forget to remove your garden hose before winter?

Reid Kittelson

3/23/20232 min read

I know it doesn't feel like it as we sit here at the end of March in deep snow, but warmer weather is coming to the Fargo-Moorhead area....someday. With warmer weather may come the need to use your outside faucet (also referred to as a hose bib, or sillcock). However, if you did not disconnect your hose before the winter, or only remembered to disconnect it after freezing temperatures already occurred, you may be in for an unwelcome surprise the first time you go to use it in the spring. The unwelcome surprise may be a flooded basement due to a burst water pipe.

But how would a pipe burst in the warmer spring weather?

Well, they don't. Rather, the reason that you would not experience the effects of a burst pipe until you go to use an outside faucet after a long winter has to do with the way that modern hose bibbs are designed to work. Code in our cold climate has required the use of "frost-free" or sometimes called "freeze-proof" hose bibbs for some time now. They are designed to prevent water from freezing inside the faucet and causing damage to the plumbing system. The way they do this is to have a long stem that extends into the house several inches. The valve that allows water to pass when you turn the faucet handle is located on the very end of the interior (house-side) of the stem, well within the warm side of the home. When the handle is turned off, the valve closes and the water from the entire stem is drained, preventing freezing. This works great when there is no hose attached, but when a hose is attached during a freeze all of that water that was supposed to drain out is trapped in the stem section which then freezes and causes extreme pressure on the copper pipe resulting in a rupture. Side note: Contrary to popular belief, it is generally not the freezing of the water itself that ruptures a pipe, it is the buildup of air pressure created further down the pipe by the expanding ice. Because the rupture is located after the closed valve, you will likely not notice the rupture until you first open the faucet after the winter and realize that you are watering your basement rather than your lawn!

So, always remember to remove your hose before freezing weather, right? Well, yeah that is the best approach, but Woodford, a manufacturer of frost-free hose bibbs actually makes a version that has an integrated pressure relief valve (remember that pressure build up from freezing ice I talked about?) that is said to prevent rupture even when a hose is inadvertently left in place. You can even upgrade an existing Woodford model with this pressure relief valve without replacing the whole unit! We went from a time where we would have to "winterize" exterior faucets to now basically being fool-proof. What a time to be alive! The installation illustration above is from the Woodford website which I will also link to here, there is some good info: https://www.woodfordmfg.com/Woodford/

That's it, until next time.