Leaky faucets can prevent burst pipes.

Every home should have some leaky faucets, especially in the South, maintain University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers Jeff Gordon and Bill Rose. Faucets designed to drip automatically whenever freezing temperatures threaten to burst water pipes provide an easy and cheap solution to a potentially expensive problem. According to estimates from the Insurance Institute for Property Loss Reduction, $4,000,000,000 in insurance claims were paid over the past decade for damage occurring from burst pipes.

The problem is caused by something other than what most people think, Gordon points out. The explanation is that "a pipe usually will burst in a place that has almost no ice in it."

While ice ultimately causes the breakage, it does so indirectly. First, it creates a blockage, then ice growth toward the closed faucet dramatically raises the water pressure in that part of the pipe. After a hundredfold increase in pressure -- from a normal 40 to 50 pounds per square inch to more than 4,000 -- a copper pipe is likely to burst. "You can make as much ice as you want in the pipe, with no danger it will burst -- until a solid blockage occurs. It's not the ice itself, but the fact that expansion of the water as it freezes creates tremendous hydrostatic pressure, and it is the water pressure that bursts the pipe."

So...