Water is coming out of your wall. Or your ceiling. Or it's sheeting across the garage floor from somewhere behind the water heater, and every second you spend reading this, more of it is arriving. So here's the entire first move in one sentence: find your main shutoff valve and close it — now, before you diagnose anything.
Done? Good. Take a breath. Everything from here is cleanup, prevention, and process — and this guide walks all of it, in order.
For everyone reading this on a calm day instead (smart — bookmark it): the reason this article exists is that Central Texas homes and hard freezes have a violent history. The 2021 storm burst pipes in hundreds of thousands of Texas homes, and every February since has added its own toll, because our houses are built for heat — plumbing in exterior walls, uninsulated attic runs, hose bibs facing north — and our freezes arrive fast, deep, and occasionally with power outages attached.
A burst pipe moves fast: a typical half-inch line under pressure dumps 4 to 8 gallons a minute. That's a bathtub every five minutes, into your drywall. The difference between a $500 story and a $50,000 insurance saga is almost entirely how fast the water stopped — which is why the shutoff valve, not the plumber's number, is the thing to know cold.
So: where is that valve? For most Central Texas homes, one of three places — at the water meter box near the street (needs a meter key or channel-lock pliers; keep one by the door in freeze season), at the house-side shutoff where the line enters (commonly near an exterior faucet on the street-facing wall, or in the garage), or for newer builds, a clean quarter-turn ball valve in the garage or a utility closet. Tonight's homework if you're reading this dry: go put your hand on it.
Skip the search-ad roulette. Tell us once, and we'll match you with a licensed, vetted Central Texas pro — price quoted before any work.
Now the full playbook, minute by minute.
Water off at the main. Then open the lowest faucet in the house (a tub or outdoor spigot) and a high one — this drains the system's remaining pressure and stops the residual flow into the wall.
Kill electricity to affected areas at the breaker panel if water is anywhere near outlets, fixtures, or the panel's circuits — standing water and live wiring is the one combination in this story that can hurt you rather than your house.
If the leak is at or near the water heater: close the cold-water valve on top of the tank, and turn the unit off (breaker for electric; gas valve to OFF). A tank cut off from supply stops feeding the leak.
Move what matters: rugs up, furniture legs onto foil or blocks, electronics and documents out of the splash zone. The stuff you save in minute five is the claim you don't file in week three.
Start removing water immediately — wet/dry vac, towels, squeegee toward hard floors. Drywall and carpet pad that stay saturated past 24–48 hours become a mold conversation, and mold remediation costs more than plumbing.
Pipes don't usually burst where they freeze — ice forms, expands, and the pressure spike ruptures the pipe somewhere between the blockage and a closed faucet, which is why the break often reveals itself only at thaw, hours after the cold snap peaks. It's also why a faucet left dripping (movement + pressure relief) genuinely works as prevention.
Central Texas's usual suspects: hose bibs and their interior wall connections, pipes in exterior walls (kitchen sinks on outside walls above all), uninsulated attic runs — abundant in our attics — water heaters and softener loops in garages, and sprinkler backflow preventers, which burst by the thousand every freeze and geyser dramatically.
During the freeze itself: drip faucets served by exterior-wall or attic runs, open cabinet doors under sinks, keep the house heated even if you're away, and disconnect hoses from bibs. If you lose power for an extended stretch in hard cold, shutting off the main and draining the system preemptively is the veteran move — an empty pipe can't burst.
Our full freeze-proofing guide covers the permanent fixes: insulating the vulnerable runs, faucet covers, and the attic work worth doing some mild November weekend.
Photograph and video everything before cleanup, during, and after — the burst point, the water's reach, damaged items, meter readings. Insurance adjusters live on documentation, and thirty seconds of phone video shot while the floor is still wet outranks any written description filed later.
Homeowner's policies generally cover sudden-and-accidental water damage — the drywall, flooring, and drying-out — while excluding the pipe repair itself and anything attributable to 'gradual' leaks or neglect. Freeze bursts in a heated home are the textbook covered event; the same burst in a home left unheated for a week gets adjuster questions. File promptly; delay is the enemy of claims.
For meaningful volumes of water, a professional mitigation company with commercial dehumidifiers and moisture meters is usually worth the call, and often billable to the claim — drying structure properly is a measured process, not a fan pointed at a wall.
Keep every receipt, including the emergency plumber, the shop vac you bought at 9pm, and the hotel if it comes to that — 'loss of use' coverage exists on most policies and people routinely forget to claim it.
The plumbing fix itself is usually the cheapest chapter: a straightforward burst-section repair runs a few hundred dollars — accessible copper or PEX splices at the low end, exterior-wall or slab-adjacent access pushing higher. Frozen hose bib replacements and backflow preventer rebuilds are similarly modest, routine work.
Freeze weeks scramble plumber availability exactly like heat waves do AC techs — which is where Beaver's matching earns its keep: one form, marked urgent, symptoms described, and a licensed local plumber whose calendar we can actually see gets dispatched, at a price quoted before work. That beats redialing a metro's worth of voicemail boxes with a wet vacuum running.
While the plumber's there, buy the upgrade conversation: replacing burst-prone sections in PEX (which tolerates freeze expansion dramatically better than rigid copper), adding shutoff accessibility, and insulating what's exposed. Post-burst repairs are the cheapest moment to freeze-harden the specific runs your house has now proven vulnerable.
If the burst was under the slab rather than in a wall — signaled by warm floor spots, no visible wall source, and the meter still creeping — that's a different playbook entirely: our slab leak guide takes it from there.
Before next freeze season, spend one November hour: foam faucet covers on every bib ($3 each), pipe insulation sleeves on garage and attic runs ($1 per foot), a meter key on a hook by the door, and everyone in the household shown the main shutoff — including the teenagers, who are statistically likeliest to be home alone when the ceiling starts dripping.
Add the sprinkler system to the ritual: insulate the backflow preventer or shut and drain the system for freeze events. It's the most-burst, least-remembered fitting in Texas.
None of this is expensive and all of it is boring, which is the entire aesthetic of good plumbing: the burst pipe that never happens, the claim never filed, the February morning where the worst thing in the house is the group chat. That's the goal. Put your hand on that valve tonight.
Three variants of this emergency behave differently enough to earn their own lines. Upstairs bursts: water follows framing and exits somewhere unrelated to the break — a garage ceiling stain can source from a bathroom fifteen feet away, so shut the main on any active interior water even when the origin is unclear, and let the plumber trace it rather than cutting exploratory holes yourself. Slab-adjacent bursts: water pooling at baseboards with no wall source, or a meter that spins with the house dry, moves you from this playbook to the slab leak one — different detection, same urgency. And rentals: tenants should know the shutoff location on day one and landlords should confirm it's labeled — the four-minute walkthrough at move-in is the cheapest insurance either party will ever carry. In all three cases the constant holds: the shutoff valve is the hero of every version of this story, and the households that rehearse finding it are the ones whose stories stay short.
Last habit worth stealing from insurance adjusters: an annual five-minute phone video walking your home's plumbing — heater, visible runs, fixtures, the meter. Pre-loss documentation of condition settles coverage arguments before they start, and the February version of you will owe the November version a favor.
Frame the takeaway once more and then go check: your house's water can be stopped by one valve, in one location, that costs nothing to find today and everything not to know during the event. Go put your hand on it — this article will still be here when you get back.