3 ms·

If it's 60 degrees then it isn't freezing now, but it could have been lower overnight.

• stephencanon 11y ago
  Heat loss is proportional to the temperature difference across the boundary (walls and windows and roof). Even when it's quite cold outside, heat loss slows down as the house gets colder, and then you still have all the phase change energy to dump before pipes freeze. This will not happen overnight except in the most extreme cases, and it certainly will not then warm back up to 60. Anecdotally, I was once without central heat for three days in 0-20F, and nothing froze. The basement got down to 38.
  • kale 11y ago
    A lot of that depends on where your house is built. I have a house in an area that can go an entire winter without getting much below 40F. No one builds with "freeze-proof" faucet design, which recesses the valve to the outside water faucets within the wall. I had two pipes freeze and burst after 3 days of freezing temperatures (first time anyone can remember being more than 24 hours below freezing). One was an outside faucet, properly protected and insulated. The other was frozen inside the slab, near the wall.
    • stephencanon 11y ago
      When you live somewhere with actual weather, outdoor faucets are closed and drained for the winter and most of spring. There's no such thing as "freeze-proof" faucets at -30.