It doesn’t freeze here too often, but when it’s going to we’ll go outside and set our faucets to drip to prevent freezing. I just have to remember to do this, and I worry that I’ll forget. Do those faucet covers work? Any other options?
It’s unclear if you mean an outdoor faucet appearing out the side of a house, or a freestanding garden spigot. But in either case, the full solution often involves replacing the spigot with a frost-free spigot. It prevents freezing by having the valve located somewhere warmer, such as within the house or underground.
The normal handle will turn a long rod connected to the valve, and when closed will drain the excess water out the spigot, leaving no water outside or above ground that can freeze. The freestanding spigot has the complication of needing a gravel base to drain the excess water into.
An alternative might be to use an air compressor to force water out of your spigots, as part of annual winterization. This only works if you don’t plan to use the faucet during the cold season, though.
Depending on the relative elevations and arrangement of stuff, you may not need a fancy spigot on the outside. My house has secondary valves inside the basement that can be used to shut off the water to the outside spigots in fall, along with a bleed cap I can open to let the water drain out of the pipe between the interior of the basement and the exterior spigot. There’s no need for an air compressor since if you leave the outside spigot open when you open the bleed cap gravity does all the work.
here in canada where it freezes 17 months out of the year, 99.9% of the houses have shutoff valve inside the house that supplies the outside tap. id recommend turning on the outside tap, then turn off the valve inside.
The house I’m renting has a valve for the outside tap, except someone decided to plumb all the water for the second bathroom downstream from it.
I live in MN and every fall when we’re done in our yard I’ll turn off the water in the house for the lines that go to the outdoor faucets attached to the house.
Then I’ll open those faucets outside to let the water drain.
Inside the house on the water line itself is a bleeder valve I’ll open to help the line drain.
Once drained I close the drain valve and the bleeder valve and put an insulating cover on the spigot.
Close inside, open outside.
The advice about turning off the water from inside is the best solution. Having said that, I don’t always do it. The weather has been so variable over the last few years that turning the water on and off got to be a hassle. I do shut if off when we hit the main stretch of winter, but I use covers to guard against the unseasonable freezes that happen on either side of that. I have not had any problems over several years of this, so I think I can say that they work.
There are faucets that drain the exterior parts of it as you close it specifically so that they don’t freeze.
