Frozen Pipes in Portadown — Gentle Heat, Never a Flame

How do you thaw a pipe without a disaster?

Work in this order and the odds stay on your side:

1. Stopcock off first. If the freeze has split the pipe somewhere you can't see, this is what stands between you and a flood when the ice melts.
2. Open the affected tap. Melting water needs somewhere to go, and a running dribble tells you the thaw is working.
3. Gentle heat, from the tap end back. Hairdryer on a low setting, towels soaked in warm water, a heated room. Patience is the tool; the ice plug does the rest.
4. Check the thawed section for weeping joints or a bulge before you open the stopcock again — slowly, with someone watching the pipe.

Why does the flood arrive with the thaw?

Which pipes freeze first around here?

The pipes that freeze are the ones the heating never reaches: loft runs above the insulation, garages and outbuildings, under suspended ground floors, outside taps, and anything clipped along an outside wall. Portadown's housing covers every era — Victorian red-brick terraces with pipework in draughty voids, and newer estates whose external condensate pipes are famously the first casualty of a hard frost, shutting the boiler down in protest. Different eras, same physics: cold air plus still water equals trouble.

What stops the freeze happening at all?

Prevention here is cheap and unglamorous, which may be why it gets skipped:

• Lag the exposed runs — loft, garage, outside walls, the outside tap. Foam sleeves cost little and fit without tools.
• Keep the heating ticking over in a cold snap, low and steady, rather than fully off for days — especially if the house will be empty.
• Let warmth reach cold corners: loft hatch ajar in a hard frost, cupboard doors open where pipes run against outside walls.
• Know your stopcock now — usually under the kitchen sink or where the supply enters the house. Finding it in daylight beats finding it mid-flood.
• Fix the small stuff before winter: a dripping tap or weeping joint gives ice its starting point.

None of this is heroic. That's rather the point — the heroics are what happen when it wasn't done.