It's important to remember our pets, pipes and plants as temperatures continue to drop in the Rio Grande Valley.

Many have already prepped their pipes to make sure they are protected during the next couple of days. One Las Milpas resident now has some new colorful additions outside his home.

The red, green and black pool noodles are insulating his outdoor pipes.

"Just cut it to size to hug it there and avoid it from freezing. That's just one of them," Julian Llanos said. "That's the shut-off valve to open and close the water."

Llanos says he had to find alternatives after a trip to a hardware store.

"There wasn't any so we decided to get creative, and we use the pool noodles," Llanos said. "Because everybody was going like thinking it's going to freeze real bad, everybody was buying for the insulation."

Llanos also plans to leave his faucets a little bit open to avoid any damages.

"That way, later on, you won't have to fix a broken pipe or have a mess under your yard," Llanos said. "Generally, the pipes expand, and then they will make it burst, and then you would have water after everything coming out."

While the forecast shows the cold front currently passing through the Valley won't be as bad as the freeze in 2021, Llanos says he doesn't want to see a repeat.

"A couple of years back, when it froze, this one did burst, even though we opened a little bit, so we had to fix it," Llanos said. "We have to let the water subsided, then we have to dig there cause everybody was quoting us like $300, $400."

Other equipment to use to avoid insulation issues are faucet covers or protectors.

"There's spigot covers that you can use. I've even seen people use cups to put over to cover up those things, wrap them up with trash bag or grocery sack or whatever you got to keep those from freezing," Ted's Borderland Hardware Owner Rosemarie Crimbring said.

They both agree what is important is to take steps now. For the Llanos family, doing things with time gives them peace of mind.

"You don't want to be without water, and another thing, it saves you money in the long run," Llanos said. "In my mind, it's better to be safe than sorry, it might not, hopefully it doesn't, but just to be proactive."

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