Outside Hose Bib Freezing

Remove your garden hose from the hose bib and drain all of the water from the hose. Put the hose away until you need it. The faucet should be frost proof. The frost proof feature can fail if you leave your garden hose connected. So it is important to disconnect it anytime your not using it or if you have freezing weather in the forecast.

Many homes are equipped with a frost proof hose bib. The way it works is that the valve is set back between 6 and 12 inches. So, the handle basically has a long stem that goes about a foot into the house. So this way the water is held back into the house where it is expected to be warmer. This makes it harder to freeze. You can also get a cover for additional protection. This way no air can get in and your faucet is provided with additional insulation from the outside weather.

Well hopefully you will be fine. If your faucet is a modern hose bib that is frost proof, you should be ok. However, it is best to have this disconnected before freezing. You see, when the spigot is turned off, water should drain out from the spigot and pressure should be relieved from the hose itself. As long as this works as designed, you will have no water to freeze in any sensitive areas of the faucet. But, things don’t always work as planned and if water somehow remains in the faucet, it could freeze.

You can get lucky and have no issue once it thaws. Most likely though, you will have a split in the tube that leads from where the valve portion is located to the hose connector where you attached the garden hose. If this happens, you should not have a leak when the faucet is off, but you will have an internal leak when the water is on. This will result in low water pressure at the hose end and water escaping either into your crawl space or your wall.