My pipes keep freezing
Freezing pipes rarely burst where they froze — they burst between the ice plug and a closed tap, where the pressure has nowhere to go. That's why a dripping tap works.
What actually works
Moving water helps, but the real mechanism is relieving the pressure that the expanding ice builds. Costs pennies.
Most freeze-ups are a draught problem, not an insulation problem — a pipe in a wall with a gap to the outside freezes while its neighbour doesn't. Find the draught.
Self-regulating cable, installed per the instructions. **Put a current clamp on the circuit** — the common failure is heat tape that quietly stopped drawing power weeks ago.
The only permanent fix for a buried line. Your county's frost depth is published; dig deeper than it.
A leading cause of house fires in cold snaps, and it can flash steam inside the pipe. Warm the whole area slowly instead.
Also searched as
frozen pipes · burst pipe winter · stop pipes freezing · heat tape · water line freeze · hydrant froze · winterize plumbing