How do you prevent frozen pipes in a Middle Tennessee winter?

Because a lot of the plumbing here runs through spaces the heat doesn't reach. Our hard cold comes in spells. A mild stretch can turn bitter overnight, and the cold can hang on for a night or a week.

Plenty of houses here, especially older ones, sit over a crawl space with the water lines running through it. Those lines freeze first, along with pipes in outside walls, attics and garages.

Oddly, the pipe often doesn't split where the ice is. As a plug of ice grows, it expands and squeezes the water trapped between it and a closed faucet. Pressure builds in that stretch until the pipe gives. A dripping faucet lets it out.

Get the house ready while it's still mild. Nobody likes a crawl space, but it's a lot nicer in October than in January. Each fall:

• Take the hoses off outdoor faucets. A hose left on holds water in the faucet to freeze.
• If the outdoor faucets have shutoff valves inside, close them. Then open each outdoor faucet to drain, and leave it open all winter.
• Put an insulated cover on each outdoor faucet.
• Put foam sleeves on the pipes you can reach in the crawl space, attic, garage and unheated rooms. Sleeves slow heat loss, but they don't make heat.
• On a well, make sure the well house is sealed up and any heater in it works. If it freezes, the whole house loses water.
• Find your main shutoff, clear a path to it, and make sure it turns. If you can't find it or it's stuck, have a plumber look before winter.

Keep warm air reaching the pipes, and keep a little water moving through them.

• Keep the heat on and steady. Don't turn it way down at night.
• Open the cabinet doors under sinks. Move cleaners out of reach of kids and pets first.
• Let faucets drip if their pipes run through the crawl space, attic, garage or an outside wall. Cold for sure, and hot too if that line runs through the same cold space.
• Keep the garage door closed if water lines run through the garage.
• If nothing in the crawl space burns gas, close or cover its vents.

A drip helps, but in a long hard freeze it's no guarantee.

Leave the heat on, even with nobody home. The Red Cross and Nashville's Metro Water Services say no lower than 55 degrees. A burst pipe can run for days before anyone sees it.

Have someone check on the house. On a long trip in a hard freeze, also shut off the main and open the faucets to drain what you can. That won't empty every pipe, so keep the heat on anyway. Close the faucets before the water goes back on.

For one hard-to-insulate pipe, yes, if it's the right product and you follow the label to the letter.

Buy heat cable (most people call it heat tape) that's UL listed and sold for water pipes. Make sure it's rated for your kind of pipe. Don't put foam sleeves over it unless the label allows it, and never run it inside a wall, floor or ceiling.

Plug it straight into a GFCI outlet, the kind with Test and Reset buttons, not an extension cord. No GFCI outlet where you need one? Adding one is electrical work, done by licensed and insured techs, and one call to us covers it.

Old heat tape is a fire risk. Check it each fall, and replace any that's cracked, brittle or scorched.

We'd still rather fix why a pipe gets that cold.

Keep the faucet open and warm the pipe gently, starting nearest the faucet so the melt has a way out.

A faucet that slows to a trickle or quits in a freeze points to a frozen pipe. If every faucet is out, ask a neighbor or your water utility first. A water main break can do that too.

If you can see a crack, split or bulge, shut off the main before you warm anything, and call.

Use a hair dryer, an electric heating pad or towels soaked in hot water. A portable electric heater works too, kept at least 3 feet from anything that can burn. No torches or open flames. Stay with it, and keep going until full flow is back. Then check your other faucets.

Inside a wall or out of safe reach? Stop there and call.

Look for water once it thaws. Ice can hold a split shut while it's frozen, so the leak often starts as it melts. Check the crawl space, under sinks and around the water heater.

Then turn off everything that uses water, drips included, and watch the water meter, usually in a box near the street. A fast leak shows in a few minutes. For a slow one, note the reading, use no water for 2 hours, and check again. If it moved, water is going somewhere it shouldn't. On a well, watch for the pump kicking on with nothing running.

If the meter moves and you can't find the water, that's a job for leak detection.

Usually, yes. A pipe that freezes every winter is too close to the cold. It can be insulated properly or rerouted along a warmer path.

An outdoor faucet that keeps freezing can be swapped for a frost-free one. It shuts the water off farther back in the wall. It only drains if it's installed sloping down slightly and the hose is off.

We wouldn't fight the same pipe every cold snap. If one spot freezes more than once, fix it for good. The visit to look is free, and you'll have a firm price before we start.