We do not get many hard freezes here, which is exactly the problem. A backyard in Minneapolis is built for cold. A backyard in Plano is built for August, and then once every few years the temperature falls off a cliff and everything that was never designed for it finds out at once.
Two different freezes, two different kinds of damage
It helps to be precise about what happened, because the two events broke things in different ways and homeowners tend to remember them as one.
February 2021 was a duration event. Winter Storm Uri parked over Texas for the better part of a week. DFW Airport recorded a low of minus two on the morning of February 16, the coldest reading here in over thirty years, and the temperature stayed below freezing for days on end. Then the grid failed. Millions of homes across the state lost power, many of them for long stretches, which meant every automatic freeze protection system on every pool in the metroplex stopped working at the moment it was needed.
December 2022 was a speed event. An arctic front came through on the 22nd and dropped temperatures roughly forty degrees in a few hours, into the teens with a hard north wind, and held there through Christmas Eve. The power mostly stayed on. But the wind chill drove cold into equipment pads and open cabinets far faster than a still night would, and plenty of people who had got away with doing nothing in previous cold snaps did not get away with it that time.
What actually broke, in the order we saw it
This is not a ranking of what is most expensive. It is a ranking of how often each thing turned up when we walked backyards afterwards.
| What failed | Where it failed | Why | Roughly what it costs to fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pool pump | The housing or the strainer pot | Water in the pump froze and expanded. Cast housings crack; the newer composite ones sometimes survive | A new pump, more if the motor went too |
| Pool filter | The tank, the manifold, or the clamp band | Same mechanism. Cartridge filters hold a lot of water | A new filter tank or a full replacement |
| Exposed PVC | Elbows and unions on the equipment pad | Ice formed at the fittings, which are the weak points, and split them | Cheap parts, but often a full day of a technician’s time to find every split |
| Heater | The heat exchanger | Water froze inside the exchanger tubes. Almost always a full replacement | This is the expensive one |
| Outdoor kitchen sink | The supply lines under the counter | Uninsulated line in an open cabinet, in the wind | Plumber visit plus whatever the leak ruined |
| Ice maker or fridge line | The small water line, usually at the compression fitting | Tiny line, freezes in minutes, drips for days before anyone notices | Small to fix, but the water damage is often the real bill |
| Pool deck and patio joints | Expansion joints and existing hairline cracks | Water in the joint froze and pried it open. Not the cold, the water | Sealant if caught early, slab work if not |
| Irrigation backflow preventer | Above ground, on the side of the house | Brass body full of water, fully exposed | A new backflow assembly plus a licensed install |
Two things stand out from that list. First, almost none of it is the pool shell, the coping, the tile or the plaster. Properly built pools rode both freezes out without trouble, because they were designed for expansive clay that moves every year anyway. It was the equipment and the plumbing around them that failed. Second, the causes repeat: water sitting still where it can freeze. Every fix on the list is a version of getting the water out or keeping it moving.
What freeze protection on your pool controller does, and when it fails
Most pool automation systems and many standalone timers have a freeze setting. When the air temperature sensor drops below a threshold, usually somewhere around 36 to 38 degrees, the controller turns the pump on and keeps the water circulating. Moving water is much harder to freeze than still water, and the pool itself is an enormous heat reservoir, so circulating pool water through the equipment keeps the pipes and pump well above freezing in an ordinary cold snap.
It is genuinely good protection, and it is the reason most equipment pads survive most freezes. It fails in three situations:
- The power goes out. This is what happened in 2021. No power, no pump, and within hours the water in the equipment is still and the cold is working on it. Nothing on the controller can help with this.
- The sensor is in the wrong place. If the air sensor sits against a warm house wall or inside a sheltered box, it reads warmer than the pump housing does and turns on too late. Check where yours is mounted.
- The freeze lasts long enough to overwhelm it. Circulation keeps things above freezing by moving heat from the pool. In a multi-day freeze the pool itself cools, and the margin shrinks. Uri was long enough to find that limit on some systems even where the power held.
The honest summary: freeze protection is what you rely on for a normal cold night. For a named storm with a multi-day forecast, or any time the utility is warning about load, you drain the equipment and do not rely on it.
The checklist, in the order to do it
This assumes a forecast of a hard freeze, meaning the mid-20s or below, or anything below freezing for more than a few hours. For an ordinary 30-degree night, leave freeze protection on and go to bed.
Pool and spa equipment
- Turn the power off at the breaker before you touch anything. The pump will try to run its freeze cycle while you work otherwise.
- Open every drain plug on the pump, filter, heater and any chlorinator or salt cell, and leave them out. Put them in a bag on top of the controller so you can find them in March.
- Open the air relief valve on the filter and any unions on the pad so the lines can drain rather than hold water.
- Blow out the lines if you have the equipment for it; most homeowners do not, and draining the pad is enough for a Texas freeze. A pool service can do this for a modest charge if you would rather.
- Do not drain the pool itself. A full pool is fine. An empty pool on wet Blackland clay can be lifted out of the ground by groundwater pressure, and that is a far worse problem than a broken pump.
- Cover the pad with a tarp or blanket if it is exposed to wind. Not because it insulates much, but because it stops the wind stripping heat.
Outdoor kitchen
- Shut off the water supply to the outdoor kitchen. If there is no dedicated shut-off, that is worth adding before the next winter; it makes this whole step a ten-second job.
- Open the sink tap and leave it open so the line drains and any trapped water has room to expand.
- Disconnect the ice-maker or fridge water line at the appliance and drain it. This is the one everybody forgets, and it is the one that drips inside a cabinet for days.
- Leave the gas alone unless a professional tells you otherwise. Propane and natural gas do not freeze at any temperature Texas reaches. The regulator can ice over in freezing rain, which is a different problem and rarely a damaging one.
- Empty and unplug the outdoor fridge if it is not rated for freezing temperatures. Most are not; the compressor oil thickens and the unit can fail on restart.
Patio, pool deck and hardscape
- Seal the joints and cracks in October, before any of this. Freeze damage to concrete is water in a crack freezing. No water in the crack, no damage.
- Do not salt the pool deck or a coated patio. Rock salt attacks concrete surfaces and most coatings. Use sand for grip.
- Bring cushions and anything upholstered inside. Not for the cold; for the freezing rain that usually comes with a front here.
- Disconnect and drain hoses, and insulate the hose bibs. A foam cover costs a few dollars and takes ten seconds.
Irrigation
- Wrap the backflow preventer. It is above ground, made of brass, and full of water. Foam insulation, an old towel and a bucket over the top, anything.
- Turn the controller to off so a scheduled cycle does not put water on a frozen yard and glaze the sidewalk.
Three things people did that made it worse
- Running the spa heater to keep the water warm. If the power then failed, as it did in 2021, the heat exchanger was full of water and froze solid. A heater that is drained cannot freeze.
- Draining the pool. We saw pools lifted and cracked by hydrostatic pressure after their owners emptied them 'to be safe'. A full pool is the safe state.
- Waiting to see. The forecast for both events was accurate days out. The people who drained on the Thursday were fine. The people who drained on the Sunday, after the temperature had already dropped, mostly found the damage already done.
If you are building now, design the next freeze out
Everything above is a workaround for backyards that were not built with cold in mind. If you are planning a pool or an outdoor kitchen now, most of it can simply be designed away:
- A dedicated, accessible shut-off and drain for the outdoor kitchen supply, so winterizing is a valve and a tap.
- Supply lines run inside insulation and on the sheltered side of the cabinet, not against the outer wall.
- The equipment pad out of the prevailing north wind, which in practice means not on the north or northwest corner of the house if there is any choice.
- A variable-speed pump with freeze protection that can run at a low, quiet speed all night without a big electricity bill, so people actually leave it on.
- Unions and drain plugs placed so a homeowner can reach them without tools and without crawling. If draining the pad is a miserable job, it does not get done.
None of that adds much to a build. All of it turns a February emergency into an hour on a Thursday afternoon.
The bottom line
North Texas will get another freeze like these. Not every year, but often enough that a backyard should be ready for one, and the readiness is mostly a valve, a drain plug and a habit of watching the forecast in December. The equipment that survived 2021 and 2022 was not better equipment. It was equipment somebody had drained on Thursday.
Questions we get asked about this
No. Drain the equipment — pump, filter, heater — but leave the pool full. An empty pool on wet North Texas clay can be pushed up out of the ground by groundwater pressure, which is far more expensive than any freeze damage. A full pool is the safe state.
No. Freeze protection works by running the pump to keep water moving. With no power there is no pump, and the water in the equipment goes still and freezes. That is exactly what happened across DFW in February 2021. For a multi-day freeze or any grid warning, drain the equipment rather than relying on the controller.
Water in a pump or filter can freeze on any night the air stays below 32°F for more than a few hours, and faster with wind. Most controllers start freeze protection around 36–38°F for that reason. Below the mid-20s, or below freezing for more than a night, drain the equipment.
Shut off the water supply, open the sink tap so the line drains, disconnect and drain the ice-maker or fridge water line, and unplug an outdoor fridge that is not rated for freezing temperatures. Gas lines do not need attention at Texas temperatures.
Cold alone will not. What cracks concrete in a freeze is water sitting in an existing crack or joint, freezing, and prying it wider. Sealing joints and hairline cracks in the fall prevents most of it. And do not use rock salt on a pool deck or coated patio — use sand.
On average the first freeze at DFW arrives in the second half of November, and the last in mid-March, but the damaging events here have come in February and late December. Have the checklist done before Thanksgiving and keep an eye on the forecast through early March.
