Many folks in our area will wake up Wednesday morning to kitchens and bathrooms flooded with water from broken pipes. They're a big problem whenever the temperature dips below freezing.

Just following a few simple steps can go a long way toward helping you avoid a messy and expensive plumbing disaster. Number one on the list is a task that's probably right outside your front door.

Before you go to bed on a cold night, check the outside faucet on your home. If your garden hose is connected, disconnect it. You have just prevented the single biggest cause of frozen pipes on the Grand Strand, according to Anthony Jordan with Jordan & Sons Plumbing. "The water freezes inside the hose, the ice expands up the hose, into the faucet and then cracks the faucet or snaps it off the wall."

After you disconnect the hose, install an insulated cover on the outside faucet. While you're at it, place insulated foam coverings over all your exposed pipes. Then step inside your home and open the cabinet doors underneath your sink. There's about a ten to 20 degree difference between the air temperature in the room and that under the sink. "It's cooler up underneath there because there's no vents going to it," Anthony said, "So, by opening it up it allows the warm air inside the house to get up underneath there."

Flowing water generally won't freeze solid, so turn on the faucets in your kitchen and bathroom slightly and let the water run. Anthony recommends, "little bit faster than a drip, a steady stream, but you have to make sure the drains are still good, where you're having the fixture run into it."

After all that, if your pipes still freeze, don't try thawing them out with a torch or other open flame. Anthony says the best thing to use is a hair dryer and then, "leave the faucets open gently so as it de-ices itself, the ice will blow through the system and then water comes out."

Finally, set the thermostat in your home to at least 68 to 70 degrees. If you do all those things, you probably won't have a problem with frozen pipes.

Water expands by about 9 percent when it freezes. If water in a pipe has no room to expand, it'll cause the pipe to burst.