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How to keep pipes from freezing, and find out in time when the house goes cold.
A Puget Sound cold snap is short, and that is the problem: houses here are plumbed for rain, not ice, and a pipe freezes on the one night nobody planned for. Here is what Seattle and Tacoma's own utilities tell you to do, what to do if a pipe freezes anyway, and how to get a warning on your phone when the heat fails.
Keep the heat at 55 degrees F or higher day and night, even when you are away. Disconnect hoses and drain outdoor faucets, insulate pipes in crawl spaces and garages, open sink cabinets on outside walls, and in severe cold let one indoor faucet drip. Know where your main shutoff is before you need it.
By Ivan Rivas, Owner and Sales Engineer · 2026-11-06 · Updated 2026-11-06
Why the Puget Sound gets caught out
Cold snaps here are rare and short, so houses are built and plumbed for rain, not ice. Supply lines run through vented crawl spaces, garages and exterior walls, and hose bibs stay connected all winter because most winters never test them. Then two nights in the teens arrive and every plumber in the county is booked.
Water freezes at 32 degrees F, and pipes can freeze and burst below that1. Allstate, citing Angi, puts the common danger zone at 20 degrees F and below2. What matters is the temperature where the pipe is, which is why the crawl space and the garage go first.
Before the cold: the free steps
These are the steps Seattle Public Utilities and Tacoma Public Utilities give their own customers34:
- Keep the heat at 55 degrees F or higher, day and night, even when you are away.
- Disconnect and drain garden hoses. If an outdoor faucet has its own shutoff, close it and open the faucet to drain it. If it doesn't, wrap it.
- Shut off and drain the sprinkler system.
- Insulate pipes, valves and outdoor faucets in the crawl space, garage, attic and any other space that gets cold.
- Find your main shutoff and learn how to close it before you need it.
During a cold snap
Open the cabinet doors under sinks on outside walls so the room's heat reaches the pipes. In severe cold, let one indoor faucet drip slowly; Seattle suggests the one farthest from your front door3. State Farm says to keep the thermostat at the same setting day and night rather than turning it down overnight1.
If a pipe freezes anyway
If a faucet gives a trickle or nothing at all, the pipe feeding it is likely frozen. Leave the faucet open and warm the pipe with a hair dryer, an electric heating pad or towels soaked in hot water. Never use a blowtorch, a propane or kerosene heater or any open flame, and keep electric devices away from standing water3.
If a pipe bursts, close the main shutoff at once and call a plumber. A split pipe often doesn't leak until it thaws, so check the crawl space and the garage the morning after a hard freeze.
The real risk: a house nobody is in
Every step above assumes someone is home to notice. The expensive frozen pipe is the one in a house where the furnace quit or the power went out on a Friday night and nobody knew until Sunday. State Farm paid more than $432.5 million on more than 17,200 frozen-pipe claims in 2023, an average of just over $23,500 each1. Tacoma Public Utilities' advice for a long trip is to have someone check the house each day and make sure the heat is still working4.
A sensor can make that check for you, every minute:
- A temperature monitor in a heated room. The Ajax LifeQuality measures temperature, humidity and CO2 and notifies your phone when the room drops below a limit you set. It reads from 32 to 122 degrees F5, so it belongs in a heated room near the plumbing, not in an unheated crawl space. When the furnace or the power fails, the room cools, and you hear about it while there is still time to send someone over.
- Leak sensors where water shows first. Ajax LeaksProtect sensors sit on the floor under the water heater, the washer and the sinks, and alarm within 0.15 seconds of getting wet6.
- A shutoff on the main. An Ajax WaterStop valve closes the main supply when any leak sensor trips, so a pipe that splits while you are away floods one floor for seconds, not a weekend. See water leak detection for how we install it.
All of it runs on batteries and on Ajax's own radio, and the Hub 2 Plus keeps Ethernet, Wi-Fi and cellular connections, so the notification still reaches you when the house loses power. That matters here, where winter windstorms and power cuts come with the cold (see what happens to your alarm in a power outage).
A sensor doesn't keep a pipe warm. If a house will sit unheated all winter, have a plumber shut off and drain the plumbing instead.
The kit we put together for it
The Ajax Winter Freeze & Leak Bundle is a Hub 2 Plus, a LifeQuality monitor and three LeaksProtect sensors, shipped set up by our technicians, with phone notifications in the Ajax app at no monthly charge. Add the WaterStop valve if you want the water to shut itself off. If you would rather we install it and size the valve, ask for a leak walk-through.
