Preparing a Mechanicsburg Home for Winter: A Pipe Protection Checklist

By Mechanicsburg Reco. Published October 2, 2026. Updated November 7, 2026.

Pipe protection is a one-afternoon job in October and an emergency in January. This checklist goes room by room, in the order we would do it, and ends with what to do on the coldest nights and when you leave town.

The local timing comes from our calculation of NOAA daily records for the Middletown-Harrisburg station from 1991 through 2020: the median first fall freeze is November 4, the median last spring freeze is April 9 and the average January overnight low is 23.0 degrees. The low reaches 20 or below on about 28 nights a year. Guidance based on American Red Cross material puts the risk of freezing and bursting at 20 degrees or lower.

The checklist by area

Where	What to do
Outdoor hose bibs	Disconnect hoses, close the inside shut-off if you have one and drain the faucet. Cover it if there is no inside valve.
Irrigation and outdoor lines	Shut off and drain them before the first freeze.
Garage	Insulate any supply line, seal gaps and keep the door closed on cold nights.
Crawlspace or unheated basement	Close or cover foundation vents, seal gaps and wrap exposed pipes with foam sleeves.
Exterior-wall kitchens and baths	Plan to open the cabinet doors on cold nights. Seal visible gaps around pipes where they enter the wall.
Attic	Check that insulation covers any lines and that nothing blocks warm air.
Sump pump	Test it and check that the discharge outlet is clear and will not freeze shut.
Main shut-off	Find it, test it and tell everyone in the house. Replace a stuck valve.
Heat	Set the thermostat no lower than 55 degrees, and have the furnace serviced before you rely on it.

A simple timeline

1. October. Do the outdoor tasks, the garage and the crawlspace. Finish before November 4.
2. The first cold forecast. Check the pipes you rated at risk, and run the frozen pipe risk checker.
3. Any night forecast at or below 20. Open cabinet doors, let a faucet drip on at-risk lines and keep the heat up.
4. Before you leave town. Keep the heat on, ask someone to check the house or shut the water off at the main and drain the lines.
5. April. After the median last freeze of April 9, reconnect hoses and turn outdoor water back on.

What to do on the coldest nights

The coldest reading in the 1991 to 2020 record was -22 degrees on January 21, 1994, and about 5 nights a year reach 10 degrees or lower. On a night like that, let a faucet on each at-risk line drip, open cabinet doors on exterior walls, keep interior doors open so heat reaches pipes and check pipes in the morning. A trickle that slows or stops, or frost on a pipe, means it may be freezing. Open the faucet, add heat to the space and do not use a flame.

Our walk-through of which pipes freeze first explains why the list is ordered as it is.

What to do each night, by the forecast low

Forecast low	What to do
Above 32	Nothing special. Keep the heat on.
26 to 32	Check hose bibs and cold-space pipes. Make sure the garage door is closed.
21 to 25	Open cabinet doors on exterior walls, and keep the garage and crawlspace sealed.
11 to 20	Let faucets on at-risk lines drip, add safe heat to a cold space and check pipes in the morning.
10 or below	Do all of it, and know exactly where your main shut-off is before you go to bed.

A short shopping list covers most of it: foam pipe sleeves, caulk or spray foam for gaps, hose-bib covers, a flashlight and a cheap indoor-outdoor thermometer. Put the thermometer in the crawlspace or garage. It tells you what temperature the pipes actually see, which is often higher than the forecast and sometimes lower than you hoped.

The pipes people forget

The obvious lines get attention. The ones that burst are often the ones nobody thought about: the supply to a washing machine in an unheated laundry room, a line to an outdoor kitchen or sprinkler system, a cabinet-base pipe under a bathroom on an exterior wall and a refrigerator ice-maker line in a cold corner. Walk the house once with this list in hand and look at where each water line goes. If it passes through a cold space, it belongs on the checklist.

If a pipe splits anyway

Close the main shut-off, keep clear of wet electrical equipment, take photos and call (223) 245-0005. A figure often quoted from the Institute for Business and Home Safety is that a one-eighth-inch crack can release more than 250 gallons a day, so speed matters. Read what to do in the first hour and see frozen and burst pipe cleanup.

Older houses need the longer list

Census survey estimates put about 63 percent of Mechanicsburg's housing as built before 1970. Older houses often have lines that were added or rerouted along outside walls, so run your hand along exterior walls and basement ceilings on a cold night to find cold spots. If you do not know where a line runs, a plumber can trace it. We work in Mechanicsburg, Shiremanstown, Camp Hill and Carlisle.

Winter pipe checklist questions