How hard Moore can freeze
Moore does not get long winters. It gets arctic outbreaks that arrive after mild weeks, when nobody has drained a hose or wrapped a pipe. February 2021 showed how bad it can get. On February 14, Oklahoma City said the cold had disrupted its Stanley Draper water treatment plant, and many customers it serves saw low pressure or dry taps that afternoon. On February 16 the thermometer in Oklahoma City bottomed out at minus 14°F, second only to an 1899 reading in the Oklahoma Climatological Survey record. Moore, just to the south, sat in the same air mass.
Research cited by IBHS uses 20°F as the warning mark for houses built in warm climates. Any night forecast below that is a night to drip faucets on outside walls and open the cabinets under sinks.
Where Moore pipes freeze
The age of the house decides where we look first. About half of Moore's homes were built from 1960 through 1989, per Census estimates, and about 39 percent in 2000 or later. Each era has its own trouble spots.
- The riser in older slab homes. Where the service line comes up through the slab into a garage or exterior wall, it often has little insulation and freezes first, shutting off the whole house.
- Attic runs in newer homes. Some rebuilt two-story homes run PEX or CPVC through attics over garages and bonus rooms, where cold air enters at the soffits.
- Laundry and kitchen lines on north and west walls. Wind pulls heat out of a wall cavity fast, so these lines freeze on breezy nights even when the thermometer is not at its lowest.
- Hose bibs. Standard outdoor faucets hold water in the wall right where it is coldest.
Wells and acreage at the edge of town
Not every property around Moore is on city water. If yours runs on a private well, the freeze risk moves outside: the wellhead piping, the pressure tank, the pressure switch and any line through an unheated well house. USGS notes that water from shallow domestic wells in the Central Oklahoma aquifer is not monitored by the state. The property owner looks after the whole system, freeze protection included. When a pressure switch or its sensing tube freezes, the pump cannot start, and the house goes dry even though the well is fine. We thaw well-system piping, check the pump controls and tank, and insulate everything that is exposed.
Our frozen pipe thawing process
- Find the freeze. We trace dead fixtures back along the line to the frozen section.
- Give the water an exit. We open the fixture on that line first, so pressure has a place to go as the ice turns back to water.
- Warm it slowly. Controlled heat works along the pipe toward the blockage. No torch, no open flame, no exceptions.
- Check for splits. With water flowing, we watch the thawed section and its fittings for cracks and pushed joints.
- Protect it. Insulation, draft sealing or a reroute so the same line does not freeze next winter.
Leaving town during a cold snap? Keep the heat on and either close the main and drain the lines or have someone check the house every day. A frozen line in an empty Moore house can thaw, split and run for days before anyone notices.
To read more about our full frozen pipe repair and thawing service, follow the link, or see our Moore plumbing page for local freeze history and housing.