How to Winterize Your Plumbing: Five Hacks to Prevent Bursting Pipes in Frigid Temperatures
How to Winterize Your Plumbing: Five Hacks to Prevent Bursting Pipes in Frigid Temperatures
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All home owners who live in warm environments need to do their finest to winterize their pipes. It is something you have to do during fall prior to deep wintertime truly starts. Failure to do so can spell calamity like frozen, fractured, or burst pipelines. Here are some helpful winterizing hacks to keep your plumbing system protected even if the weather condition exterior is terrible.
Try a Hair Dryer or Warmth Gun
When your pipes are almost freezing, your dependable hair dryer or warmth gun is a godsend. If the hot towels do not assist remove any kind of clearing up ice in your pipes, bowling hot air directly into them may assist. Nonetheless, do not use other objects that produce direct fires like an impact lantern. This can lead to a larger calamity that you can not control. You might wind up damaging your pipes while attempting to thaw the ice. And in the future, you might also wind up burning your house. So be careful!
Open Up Closet Doors Hiding Plumbing
When it's cool outside, it would certainly be handy to open up cupboard doors that are concealing your pipelines. Doing this small trick can keep your pipelines cozy as well as restrict the potentially hazardous outcomes of freezing temperature levels.
Require Time to Cover Exposed Pipes
One simple as well as cool hack to heat up frigid pipes is to cover them with cozy towels. You can cover them first with towels. After safeguarding them in position, you can pour boiling water on the towels. Do it slowly to let the towels take in the fluid. You can also utilize pre-soaked towels in hot water, just do not neglect to put on protective handwear covers to guard your hands from the warmth.
Switch on the Faucets
When the temperature drops and also it seems as if the frigid temperature level will last, it will certainly aid to switch on your water both inside and outdoors. This will maintain the water moving through your plumbing systems. Additionally, the motion will decrease the freezing procedure. Especially, there's no need to transform it on full blast. You'll end up wasting gallons of water by doing this. Rather, aim for about 5 drops per min.
Shut down Water When Pipelines are Frozen
Switch off the main water valve immediately if you see that your pipes are entirely icy or practically nearing that stage. You will normally discover this in your cellar or laundry room near the heating system or the front wall surface closest to the street. Turn it off immediately to stop more damages.
Do not neglect to close external water resources, as well, such as your hookup for the yard home. Doing this will prevent additional water from filling out your plumbing system. With even more water, even more ice will stack up, which will eventually lead to burst pipes. It is best to call a specialist plumber for an inspection if you are uncertain concerning the state of your pipelines this wintertime. Taking this positive approach can save you countless bucks in repairs.
All home owners that live in warm environments must do their ideal to winterize their pipelines. Failing to do so can lead to catastrophe like icy, broken, or burst pipelines. If the warm towels do not help displace any type of resolving ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air directly into them might assist. Turn off the primary water shutoff promptly if you discover that your pipelines are totally frozen or almost nearing that phase. With even more water, more ice will pile 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.
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