A homeowner on Tacoma’s unincorporated south side, a few minutes from our own shop, had two outdoor faucets to replace, one on the front of the house and one on the back. Devin did the job in a single visit in August 2026, working almost entirely from the crawl space.
What We Did
Both hose bibs were fed by 1-inch PVC running under the house. Devin removed the old spigots and installed a new frost-free hose bib at the front and another at the rear, each secured to the siding. To connect them, he glued new adapters onto the existing PVC lines and ran expansion PEX from each adapter up to its new hose bib, so the joint between the old pipe and the new is a permanent connection rather than a temporary patch. Then he turned the water back on, tested both faucets and checked every connection in the crawl space for leaks.
Why It Matters
- A frost-free hose bib closes inside the wall. Its valve seat sits in the warm part of the house, so the water left in the faucet drains out instead of freezing in the cold section by the siding.
- The crawl space is often the better side to work from. Reaching the feed line from under the house means the siding and the inside walls stay closed.
- Old pipe needs the right joint. PVC, copper and PEX each take their own fittings, and a properly glued adapter is what keeps the transition from leaking years later.
- August is a good time to do it. Replacing outdoor faucets in summer means the work is done well before the first cold snap, when burst-pipe calls fill the schedule.
Why Tacoma’s South Side
Parkland, Midland and much of South Tacoma are full of homes with water lines running through a crawl space, and the pipe feeding an outdoor faucet usually runs along the cold outer edge of the house. When arctic air comes down from the Fraser River valley, those lines and the standard hose bibs on them are the first to freeze. Moving the shutoff point inside the wall is a simple change that takes them out of that list.
Getting Your Outdoor Faucets Ready for Winter
Call us or request service before the first freeze, and we will look at how your hose bibs are fed and tell you what a frost-free replacement costs before any work starts.
More: faucet and hose bib repair in Tacoma · faucet repair and installation · how to winterize outdoor faucets in Pierce County · everything we do in Tacoma · pipe repair in Tacoma
