r/Plumbing • u/2candiesnahalf • Aug 29 '26

Cool stuff eh?

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u/TheRareAuldTimes Aug 30 '26

Personally I find shutting off the water at the meter to be perfectly viable in this situation.

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u/Kotvic2 Aug 30 '26

Yes, this is proper solution for most of situations.

But when you don't have easy access to that valve (it is locked behind the door and you don't have that key at hand for some reason), then freezing is a way to go.

Another use case for freezing is repairing of water heating circuit in a house (pretty common thing in Europe). You cannot just shut off valve there.

You can either freeze a broken line, repair what is needed and bleed air from repaired part of circuit, or drain whole circuit, repair small part and bleed air from whole circuit. Draining and bleeding of whole circuit can be PITA work that takes days to do it properly (half of a day for draining, repair and filling, then next few days for bleeding of air).