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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We have uncovered this great article involving How to Prevent Frozen Pipes below on the web and decided it made good sense to write about it with you over here.
All property owners that stay in warm climates need to do their finest to winterize their pipelines. It is something you should do throughout autumn before deep winter months genuinely begins. Failing to do so can spell calamity like frozen, cracked, or ruptured pipes. Below are some helpful winterizing hacks to maintain your plumbing system secured even if the weather exterior is frightful.
Try a Hair Clothes Dryer or Warmth Gun
When your pipes are nearly freezing, your reliable hair dryer or warm gun is a godsend. If the hot towels do not aid displace any kind of resolving ice in your pipelines, bowling warm air directly into them may aid. You might finish up harmful your pipes while trying to melt the ice.
Open Up Cupboard Doors Hiding Plumbing
It would certainly be handy to open cabinet doors that are masking your pipelines when it's chilly outside. They can be someplace in your kitchen area or restroom. This will permit the cozy air from your heater to flow there. Because of this, you stop these exposed pipes from cold. Doing this little trick can maintain your pipelines warm and also restrict the potentially unsafe results of freezing temperature levels.
Take Some Time to Cover Exposed Water Lines
One awesome and also simple hack to heat up freezing pipes is to cover them with warm towels. You can likewise make use of pre-soaked towels in hot water, simply don't neglect to use protective gloves to guard your hands from the warm.
Activate the Faucets
When the temperature declines and it seems as if the icy temperature level will last, it will certainly aid to turn on your water both indoors as well as outdoors. This will certainly maintain the water streaming via your plumbing systems. You'll finish up wasting gallons of water this method.
Shut down Water When Pipelines are Frozen
If you observe that your pipelines are totally icy or nearly nearing that stage, turn off the main water valve instantly. You will typically discover this in your basement or utility room near the heating system or the front wall surface closest to the street. Transform it off immediately to avoid more damages.
With more water, even more ice will certainly stack up, which will eventually lead to burst pipelines. If you are not sure concerning the state of your pipelines this winter season, it is best to call a professional plumber for an examination.
All home owners that live in temperate climates must do their ideal to winterize their pipes. Failing to do so can mean disaster like icy, broken, or burst pipelines. If the hot towels do not aid remove any resolving ice in your pipes, bowling warm air straight into them might assist. Transform off the primary water shutoff promptly if you notice that your pipelines are totally icy or nearly nearing that stage. With even more water, even more ice will pile up, which will at some point lead to rupture 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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