Essential Winterizing Strategies: Five Ways to Keep Pipes from Bursting
Essential Winterizing Strategies: Five Ways to Keep Pipes from Bursting
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Nearly everybody is bound to have their own individual piece of advice about How to Prevent Frozen Pipes.
All house owners who stay in pleasant environments need to do their best to winterize their pipes. It is something you should do throughout autumn prior to deep winter absolutely starts. Failure to do so can spell catastrophe like icy, broken, or ruptured pipelines. Below are some convenient winterizing hacks to maintain your plumbing system secured even if the weather condition exterior is shocking.
Attempt a Hair Dryer or Warm Gun
When your pipelines are virtually freezing, your trusty hair clothes dryer or heat gun is a godsend. Bowling warm air directly into them might help if the warm towels do not help displace any kind of clearing up ice in your pipelines. However, do not utilize various other things that produce direct flames like a strike lantern. This can cause a larger disaster that you can not manage. You may wind up damaging your pipelines while attempting to melt the ice. As well as over time, you might also wind up burning your home. So be careful!
Open Up Cabinet Doors Hiding Plumbing
When it's cool outside, it would certainly be handy to open cupboard doors that are masking your pipelines. Doing this tiny method can maintain your pipes warm and limit the potentially unsafe results of freezing temperature levels.
Take Some Time to Wrap Exposed Pipeline
One very easy and also clever hack to warm up cold pipes is to cover them with cozy towels. You can likewise use pre-soaked towels in warm water, simply don't fail to remember to put on safety gloves to safeguard your hands from the warmth.
Activate the Faucets
When the temperature drops and also it appears as if the cold temperature level will last, it will help to switch on your water both indoors and outdoors. This will maintain the water moving via your plumbing systems. Furthermore, the motion will decrease the freezing process. Significantly, there's no requirement to transform it on full blast. You'll wind up losing gallons of water this way. Instead, aim for about 5 decreases per minute.
When Pipes are Frozen, close Off Water
Shut off the main water shutoff immediately if you observe that your pipelines are completely icy or nearly nearing that phase. You will generally find this in your cellar or utility room near the heating system or the front wall closest to the street. Turn it off today to prevent additional damage.
With even more water, even more ice will certainly load up, which will eventually lead to rupture pipes. If you are unsure regarding the state of your pipelines this winter months, it is best to call a specialist plumber for an evaluation.
All house owners that live in warm environments must do their finest to winterize their pipes. Failure to do so can mean disaster like icy, split, or burst pipes. If the hot towels do not assist remove any clearing up ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air directly into them might help. Transform off the primary water shutoff promptly if you discover that your pipelines are completely icy or almost nearing that phase. With more water, even more ice will 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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