What are your opinions about Winterizing Your Pipes?
All house owners who stay in temperate environments should do their ideal to winterize their pipes. It is something you should do throughout fall before deep wintertime truly starts. Failure to do so can mean catastrophe like icy, broken, or ruptured pipes. Below are some useful winterizing hacks to maintain your plumbing system shielded even if the weather condition exterior is shocking.
Try a Hair Dryer or Warm Weapon
When your pipes are practically freezing, your reliable hair dryer or warm weapon is a blessing. If the warm towels do not aid displace any kind of settling ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air directly into them may help. You might finish up destructive your pipes while trying to thaw the ice.
Open Up Closet Doors Hiding Plumbing
When it's cool outside, it would certainly be helpful to open cabinet doors that are camouflaging your pipes. For example, they could be someplace in your kitchen or bathroom. This will certainly enable the warm air from your heater to flow there. Therefore, you avoid these exposed pipelines from cold. Doing this little trick can keep your pipelines warm as well as limit the potentially unsafe results of freezing temperatures.
Take Some Time to Wrap Exposed Pipes
One nifty as well as easy hack to heat up cold pipes is to cover them with cozy towels. You can cover them first with towels. After safeguarding them in place, you can put boiling water on the towels. Do it slowly to let the towels soak up the fluid. You can also make use of pre-soaked towels in hot water, just don't neglect to wear protective handwear covers to safeguard your hands from the heat.
Switch on the Faucets
When the temperature level declines and also it seems as if the cold temperature level will last, it will aid to transform on your water both inside your home and outdoors. This will certainly keep the water flowing through your plumbing systems. You'll end up losing gallons of water this means.
When Pipelines are Frozen, close Off Water
If you discover that your pipelines are entirely frozen or almost nearing that phase, turn off the main water valve instantly. You will usually find this in your cellar or laundry room near the heater or the front wall closest to the street. Transform it off immediately to stop more damages.
With even more water, more ice will pile up, which will eventually lead to break pipelines. If you are uncertain about the state of your pipelines this wintertime, it is best to call an expert plumber for an examination.
All house owners that live in warm climates must do their ideal to winterize their pipes. Failure to do so can lead to catastrophe like icy, split, or ruptured pipes. If the warm towels do not assist displace any type of settling ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air directly right into them may aid. Turn off the major water valve immediately if you see that your pipelines are completely icy or almost nearing that phase. With more water, even more ice will load up, which will ultimately lead to break pipes.
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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