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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What're your thoughts and feelings about Winterizing Your Pipes?
All house owners that reside in temperate climates need to do their finest to winterize their pipelines. It is something you have to do throughout fall before deep winter genuinely starts. Failing to do so can mean calamity like frozen, fractured, or ruptured pipelines. Below are some useful winterizing hacks to maintain your plumbing system secured even if the weather outside is shocking.
Try a Hair Clothes Dryer or Heat Gun
When your pipes are virtually freezing, your dependable hair dryer or warm weapon is a blessing. If the warm towels do not assist displace any type of clearing up ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air straight into them may assist. Do not use other things that produce direct flames like a blow torch. This can lead to a larger calamity that you can not control. You may wind up damaging your pipes while trying to melt the ice. And in the future, you might even wind up burning your house. So be careful!
Open Cupboard Doors Hiding Plumbing
When it's cool outside, it would certainly be useful to open cupboard doors that are masking your pipelines. They can be someplace in your cooking area or shower room. This will enable the warm air from your heating unit to distribute there. Because of this, you stop these exposed pipelines from cold. Doing this tiny trick can keep your pipes warm and also restrict the possibly unsafe end results of freezing temperature levels.
Require Time to Wrap Exposed Water Lines
One simple as well as nifty hack to heat up freezing pipes is to cover them with warm towels. You can cover them initially with towels. After protecting them in place, you can put boiling water on the towels. Do it slowly to let the towels absorb the liquid. You can additionally utilize pre-soaked towels in hot water, just do not forget to wear safety gloves to safeguard your hands from the warm.
Switch on the Faucets
When the temperature drops as well as it appears as if the cold temperature will last, it will certainly help to turn on your water both inside your home as well as outdoors. This will certainly maintain the water flowing via your plumbing systems. You'll end up losing gallons of water this means.
Shut down Water When Pipelines are Frozen
If you observe that your pipelines are entirely icy or virtually nearing that phase, transform off the primary water shutoff promptly. You will generally locate this in your cellar or laundry room near the heating system or the front wall surface closest to the street. Transform it off today to stop more damages.
With more water, more ice will certainly pile up, which will at some point 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 homeowners that live in warm climates have to do their finest to winterize their pipes. Failure to do so can mean disaster like icy, broken, or ruptured pipelines. If the hot towels do not assist dislodge any type of settling ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air straight into them might help. Transform off the main water shutoff instantly if you notice that your pipelines are completely icy or almost nearing that phase. With even more water, more ice will certainly 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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