5 Practical Hacks for Winterizing Your Home's Plumbing Against Severe Cold
5 Practical Hacks for Winterizing Your Home's Plumbing Against Severe Cold
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Have you been trying to locate advice around How to Prevent Frozen Pipes?
All home owners that live in pleasant environments must do their ideal to winterize their pipes. Failing to do so can lead to calamity like icy, fractured, or burst pipes.
Attempt a Hair Clothes Dryer or Warm Gun
When your pipes are nearly freezing, your reliable hair dryer or heat weapon is a blessing. If the warm towels do not assist remove any kind of resolving ice in your pipes, bowling hot air straight right into them may aid. Nevertheless, do not make use of various other objects that create direct fires like a blow torch. This can cause a larger catastrophe that you can not manage. You may end up destructive your pipelines while attempting to melt the ice. As well as in the long run, you might even end up shedding your home. Be careful!
Open Closet Doors Hiding Plumbing
It would certainly be helpful to open closet doors that are camouflaging your pipes when it's chilly outside. They can be someplace in your kitchen or shower room. This will enable the cozy air from your heating unit to circulate there. Because of this, you stop these revealed pipes from freezing. Doing this small trick can maintain your pipelines cozy and also limit the potentially hazardous results of freezing temperature levels.
Require Time to Wrap Exposed Piping
One simple and clever hack to warm up freezing pipes is to cover them with warm towels. You can cover them initially with towels. After securing them in position, you can put boiling water on the towels. Do it slowly to allow the towels absorb the fluid. You can also utilize pre-soaked towels in hot water, simply do not neglect to wear protective handwear covers to protect your hands from the warm.
Switch on the Faucets
When the temperature drops and also it seems as if the frigid temperature level will last, it will aid to switch on your water both inside and also outdoors. This will maintain the water moving through your plumbing systems. On top of that, the activity will slow down the cold procedure. Significantly, there's no requirement to transform it on full force. You'll end up wasting gallons of water in this manner. Instead, aim for about 5 decreases per minute.
When Pipelines are Frozen, close Off Water
Shut off the primary water shutoff immediately if you notice that your pipes are completely icy or practically nearing that stage. You will usually locate this in your basement or laundry room near the heating unit or the front wall closest to the street. Transform it off immediately to avoid further damages.
Don't neglect to close exterior water sources, as well, such as your hookup for the yard house. Doing this will prevent extra water from filling out your plumbing system. With even more water, more ice will load up, which will at some point lead to burst pipelines. It is best to call a professional plumber for an examination if you are uncertain about the state of your pipes this wintertime. Taking this aggressive approach can conserve you hundreds of dollars in repairs.
All homeowners who live in temperate environments should do their best to winterize their pipelines. Failure to do so can lead to catastrophe like icy, fractured, or burst pipelines. If the warm towels do not assist displace any resolving ice in your pipes, bowling hot air directly right into them might help. Turn off the primary water shutoff immediately if you notice that your pipelines are entirely frozen or nearly nearing that stage. With more water, more ice will certainly 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.
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