Frozen outside hose bib leaks in wall when using hose

Sometimes I get a call from a homeowner about water in a wall when they use an outside hose. What happens is that the hose isn't removed during the Winter months, and then the copper tubing splits. Remove the hose, and this never happens. Here, the wall was cut to remove the faucet and replace it.

A good reminder to remove your hoses from the spigot in the fall, huh?

It's that time of year again. They had left the hose on. The top hot side had split, the lower cold was bulging.
Again, it just shows what I see all the time. The hot will freeze first.

Terry said:

Sometimes I get a call from a homeowner about water in a wall when they use an outside hose. What happens is that the hose isn't removed during the Winter months, and then the copper tubing splits. Remove the hose, and this never happens. Here, the wall was cut to remove the faucet and replace it.

Click to expand...

Let me just add that this really does happen ! I had this happen, but for a slightly different reason. The plumber that installed our frost free faucet in our new home didn't tilt/angle it at enough of a downward angle so when we turned it off, the excess water didn't drain out.

We turned it on first time in the Spring and it was leaking into the basement all over our carpet. Fortunately, when we built the house I had an access panel put in the basement ceiling where the faucet went through the band/rim joist and it was easy enough to replace the faucet.

The split in the copper pipe looked exactly like what was pictured above.



Picture added by Terry. Always remove hoses in Winter.