I wrote this up for a coworker after I explained that I made a quick repair after one of my pipes leaked and she asked how to be better prepared...
• Determine what type and what size of plumbing you have in your home. Ie: PVC, CPVC, Galvanized Steel, PEX, etc.; ½” or ¾”
• Make sure you have an assortment of fittings. The number one choice would be couplers. Second would be caps and plugs. Other handy things to have would be elbows, tees, unions, and several short pieces of pipe. Many hardware stores and home centers sell 2 foot sections of pipe.
• Many friends ran into issues finding CPVC fittings and glue. CPVC is the yellow or tan pipe that is used on the hot water side. So if you have CPVC I would definitely keep some of this around along with the required glue.
• Lastly, make sure you know where your water cut off is. If you don’t have a cutoff valve where the water comes into your house make sure you have the right tool to turn it off at the street…and that you are familiar with knowing how to actually do that.
• A friend came up with a brilliant solution for the external hose bibs (hose faucet) on his house. He found some camera lens heaters that he was able to adapt for our winter storm. These are low wattage heaters that are on Velcro straps and he just strapped them around each hose faucet. They just use USB adapters for power so he ran an extension cord to his hose bibs and protected the plugs from the rain. Brilliant.
Many of us with reef tanks probably have a good assortment of pipe and fittings already, which is one of the reasons I actually was somewhat prepared for a leaking pipe. Also, some of the above will be no brainers for some of us that do DIY plumbing on your tank(s).
My lessons learned from this is to put the camera lens heaters on my hose bibs (which is what broke for me), make sure I have a good stock of replacement plumbing parts that actually fit my house and extra heaters for my sump in case I lose power (I have a gasoline powered generator). I may also consider investing in having a manual power transfer switch installed as well. Without one, I do not have a (safe) way to run the heat in my house from the generator.
And one soap box item, living in the Houston area, if you don't have some sort of a gas powered generator you should very much consider getting one. I really bought mine for power outage protection during a hurricane. Never did I dream that I would be using it during a winter storm. Craziness.