Best 5 Winterizing Hacks to Ensure Your Pipes Survive the Cold
Best 5 Winterizing Hacks to Ensure Your Pipes Survive the Cold
Blog Article
The content below involving How to stop pipes from freezing during the winter is incredibly fascinating. Read on and make your own personal final thoughts.
All home owners that live in warm environments should do their finest to winterize their pipelines. Failing to do so can spell catastrophe like frozen, cracked, or ruptured pipes.
Activate the Faucets
When the temperature drops and it appears as if the icy temperature level will last, it will help to activate your water both inside as well as outdoors. This will certainly keep the water moving through your plumbing systems. In addition, the motion will reduce the cold process. Notably, there's no demand to transform it on full force. You'll end up losing gallons of water in this manner. Instead, go for concerning 5 drops per minute.
Open Up Cupboard Doors Hiding Plumbing
When it's chilly outside, it would certainly be handy to open up cabinet doors that are camouflaging your pipes. Doing this tiny method can maintain your pipelines cozy and limit the potentially unsafe end results of freezing temperature levels.
Take Time to Cover Exposed Pipeline
One simple as well as clever hack to heat up cold pipes is to wrap them with warm towels. You can cover them first with towels. After securing them in position, you can pour boiling water on the towels. Do it slowly to let the towels soak up the fluid. You can likewise make use of pre-soaked towels in hot water, just do not neglect to put on protective gloves to safeguard your hands from the heat.
Try a Hair Clothes Dryer or Warmth Gun
When your pipes are almost freezing, your trusty hair dryer or warmth gun is a godsend. If the warm towels do not aid displace any settling ice in your pipelines, bowling warm air directly into them might help. You may end up harmful your pipelines while trying to melt the ice.
Shut Off Water When Pipes are Frozen
If you see that your pipes are completely icy or almost nearing that stage, turn off the primary water shutoff quickly. You will normally locate this in your basement or utility room near the heater or the front wall closest to the street. Turn it off right now to stop further damage.
With more water, more ice will pile up, which will eventually lead to rupture pipes. If you are unsure about the state of your pipelines this winter months, it is best to call a specialist plumber for an inspection.
All home owners that live in temperate environments need to do their best to winterize their pipelines. Failing to do so can mean catastrophe like icy, broken, or burst pipelines. If the warm towels do not aid displace any type of clearing up ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air straight into them might aid. Turn off the main water valve immediately if you notice that your pipes are totally icy or virtually nearing that phase. With more water, more ice will stack up, which will at some point lead to burst pipelines.
Planning Ahead for Winter Plumbing!
Given how the weather has been recently here in Kansas City, it may not seem like it, but the truth is winter is quickly approaching. As we near the end of September, it is never a bad idea to start considering which areas of your home could use some preventative maintenance heading into the colder months, as well as what you should remember to do once the colder temps settle in. And considering your plumbing system can certainly be impacted by changing weather conditions, guess what we’ll be talking about today?
For those that are visiting our blog for the very first time, welcome to Stine-Nichols Plumbing. Here on the blog, we post weekly about various aspects of the plumbing world. Whether that be DIY tips, brand highlights or anything else, they’re all designed to make homeowners more knowledgeable about their plumbing systems. Believe it or not, even just some general knowledge about one’s plumbing can go a long way in preventing unneeded repairs and keeping everything running smoothly. As referenced in the previous paragraph, this week’s blog will walk through a few of the steps you can do to your own plumbing system to ensure you’re ready to go for the upcoming winter weather and tips for keeping it all in working order as the winter carries on. Let’s hop right in!
Disconnect Hoses
You’ve likely heard this one on multiple occasions, but it is certainly something worth mentioning. Make sure to disconnect any and all outdoor hoses and then turn off those outdoor faucets at the shut-off. The logic behind this is probably something you would have learned in a grade school science class. When water freezes, it expands. Thus, due to this, it’s going to occupy more space. And if there’s no space to occupy, trouble ensues. It’s as simple as that!
Long story short, if you have room to store them indoors, do so. If not, just be sure to completely drain them and then store them in a dry area, such as the garage or a shed. Failure to disconnect the hoses can easily result in frozen/bursting pipes and plumbing headaches for you, especially if there is still water sitting in the hose! Do yourself a favor and disconnect your hoses once you know you won’t be using them anymore for that season. It’s a quick-and-easy step that’s always worth the time.
Headed Out of Town?
Our next point will likely get more and more relevant as we get into the holiday season. Do you remember the extreme arctic blast that hit the Kansas City area in February of 2021? Sub-zero temps, frigid wind chills, it was definitely not the funnest of times for KC residents. Nonetheless, here at Stine-Nichols Plumbing, it’s safe to say our technicians were quite busy dealing with frozen/bursting pipes. What I’m hinting at here is that you never know when we’ll experience extremely cold temperatures. So if you’re going to be out of town for a little bit, it’s never a bad idea to turn off your water at the main shut-off valve. While this won’t prevent every possible plumbing issue, it will at least limit the damage if something bad were to occur. Especially if you don’t have a family member or friend that’ll be checking on your home while you’re away, make sure to keep this tip in mind!
By the way, it may sound like a no-brainer to most, but if you are headed out of town, make sure to also keep the heat on inside while away. You will have some added energy costs from heating a home while nobody’s there, but if it prevents you from dealing with a plumbing emergency, it’s well worth it!
Leave Cabinet Doors Open
As you may start to notice, the primary winter plumbing problem that you need to be mindful of involves pipes freezing. Whether it be indoors or outdoors, they can freeze for a few different reasons, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of various tactics you can implement to improve your odds of keeping everything in working order. Yet another one of these that you’ve likely heard before is leaving the cabinet doors under your bathroom or kitchen sink open. Will this provide complete protection? Not necessarily. However, this is an easy way to make sure some of the heat in your home is reaching those pipes that aren’t insulated under your sinks.
https://www.stinenichols.com/kansas-city/planning-ahead-for-winter-plumbing/
I'm very serious about Prevent Freezing and Bursting Pipes and I really hope you appreciated the post. In case you enjoyed our article if you please make sure you remember to pass it around. We appreciate reading our article about Winterizing Your Pipes.
Call Today Report this page