Dripping a Faucet Costs Pennies a Night
A thin trickle that fills a gallon jug in about an hour, the rate Mississippi State University Extension suggests, uses 12 gallons over a 12-hour freezing night. At $6 per 1,000 gallons for water and another $6 for sewer, that's about 14¢. Mississippi State puts it at about 2¢ a night at the rates it used. Even a pencil-thin stream at 5 gallons an hour costs well under a dollar a night.
| Drip rate | Gallons per 12-hour night | At $8 / 1,000 gal | At $12 | At $20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slow drip, 0.5 gal/hr | 6 | $0.05 | $0.07 | $0.12 |
| Trickle, 1 gal/hr | 12 | $0.10 | $0.14 | $0.24 |
| Thin stream, 3 gal/hr | 36 | $0.29 | $0.43 | $0.72 |
| Pencil-thin stream, 5 gal/hr | 60 | $0.48 | $0.72 | $1.20 |
Rates are water plus sewer per 1,000 gallons. Drip the cold side of the faucet farthest from where water enters the house, so water moves through the whole run of pipe, and open sink cabinets on outside walls to let room heat reach the pipes.
The Sewer-Averaging Catch
Some cities set your sewer charge for the whole year from what you use in winter. Austin, Texas, for example, averages three months of water use between December and March and bills that volume for sewer every month until the next averaging period. If a freeze lands in your averaging window, every gallon you drip is billed as sewer four times over: one-third in each of the twelve months that follow. That can turn a 14¢ night into 36¢ or so. Still cheap next to a burst pipe, but worth knowing; some utilities adjust averages after major freeze events if you ask.
Heat Cable: Set It and Forget It
Thermostat-controlled pipe heat cables from hardware stores run at about 7 watts per foot and switch on when the pipe drops below about 38°F, then off above 45°F. A 15-foot cable draws about 105 watts, roughly 23¢ for a 12-hour freezing night at 18¢ per kWh, and about $14 if it somehow ran around the clock for a month. That's similar to dripping a faucet, but it protects a vulnerable run of pipe in a crawlspace or well house without you having to remember.
Follow the manufacturer's rules: never wrap the cable over itself, cover it with non-combustible insulation, keep it out of walls and floors, and test it before the cold arrives. Roof and gutter de-icing cable is a different product at higher wattage and can cost far more; one Colorado co-op figures 100 feet at 9 watts per foot running 24 hours a day at about 650 kWh a month.
Heat Lamps and Small Heaters
A 250-watt heat lamp or small heater keeps a pump house or crawlspace access above freezing at around 54¢ a night. Use only units meant for the location, with guards, and keep them away from insulation, straw and stored fuel; heat lamps are a common cause of barn and outbuilding fires.
Compare That With a Burst Pipe
State Farm says its frozen-pipe and other freeze-related homeowner claims averaged more than $30,000 from January 2024 to June 2025. Ten nights of dripping one faucet costs about $1.40, and the same ten nights on a 15-foot heat cable about $2.30. The cheapest protection is often just keeping the heat on: the Red Cross advises leaving the thermostat no lower than 55°F when you're away. Our thermostat setback calculator shows what a deeper setback would save, and that saving is small next to the risk in a hard freeze.
If the power goes out in a freeze, the clock starts on the whole house; see how fast a house cools without power.