Oklahoma winters don't mess around anymore. We get these stretches where it drops into the teens and stays there, and every year that first real cold snap fills my claims queue with the same thing: burst pipes. Not hail, not wind. Water, in a ceiling, at 2 a.m., in January.
Nobody writes songs about disconnecting your garden hose, but it's the $0 fix that prevents a five-figure claim. Here's the list. It's short. Do it on a Saturday afternoon before Thanksgiving and forget about it.
Outside
- Disconnect and drain every hose. A frozen hose bib backs ice up into the pipe inside your wall. That's where the burst happens, inside your house.
- Shut off and drain the irrigation system if you have one.
- Cover the hose bibs with the cheap foam covers from any hardware store.
- Check the roof and gutters. Clogged gutters cause ice dams, and ice dams push water under your shingles. While you're up there (or while someone's up there), ask how old the roof is (more on that below).
- Trim branches away from the house. Ice makes weak limbs heavy.
Inside
- Know where your main water shutoff is, and make sure everyone else in the house knows too. If a pipe does burst, that's the difference between a mop job and a rebuild.
- Insulate exposed pipes in the attic, crawl space, and garage. Foam sleeves are a few bucks each.
- If a hard freeze is coming and you're traveling: shut off the main, drain the lines, and leave cabinet doors under sinks open so warm air reaches the plumbing.
- Service the furnace before the first cold night, not after.
- Test the smoke and CO detectors. Heating season is when we light things and plug things in.
The insurance angle
Two things worth knowing about your policy when the temperature drops.
First, sudden burst pipes are generally covered. But damage from a slow leak you ignored for months is a much harder conversation with an adjuster. Prevention pays twice.
Second, your roof's age matters more than most people realize, and not just in winter. If your roof is pushing 15 or 20 years, some carriers surcharge you or drop wind/hail coverage to actual cash value, which means depreciated payouts. If you don't know how old your roof is, find out. It's the single biggest factor in your home rate in Oklahoma, and it's institutional knowledge no website can look up for you.