Get Ready for Winter: Five Essential Hacks to Protect Your Pipes From Bursting
Get Ready for Winter: Five Essential Hacks to Protect Your Pipes From Bursting
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All home owners that stay in warm climates need to do their best to winterize their pipelines. It is something you must do throughout fall before deep winter season genuinely begins. Failing to do so can spell disaster like icy, broken, or ruptured pipes. If the weather condition outside is frightful, below are some helpful winterizing hacks to keep your plumbing system secured even.
Attempt a Hair Dryer or Warm Weapon
When your pipelines are nearly freezing, your dependable hair dryer or warmth gun is a blessing. If the warm towels do not assist dislodge any type of clearing up ice in your pipelines, bowling hot air directly into them might aid. However, do not make use of other objects that create straight fires like a blow torch. This can cause a bigger catastrophe that you can not manage. You might end up damaging your pipes while attempting to thaw the ice. As well as in the long run, you may even wind up melting your residence. So be careful!
Open Cupboard Doors Hiding Plumbing
When it's cold outside, it would be handy to open up cupboard doors that are camouflaging your pipelines. Doing this little technique can keep your pipes warm and restrict the possibly unsafe end results of freezing temperatures.
Take Time to Wrap Exposed Water Lines
One easy and also cool hack to warm up frigid pipelines is to cover them with cozy towels. You can likewise use pre-soaked towels in warm water, simply do not forget to wear safety handwear covers to safeguard your hands from the warm.
Turn On the Faucets
When the temperature level drops and it appears as if the freezing temperature level will last, it will aid to switch on your water both inside your home and outdoors. This will certainly keep the water moving with your plumbing systems. On top of that, the activity will certainly decrease the freezing process. Especially, there's no need to transform it on full blast. You'll wind up throwing away gallons of water this way. Instead, go for concerning 5 drops per minute.
When Pipes are Frozen, shut Off Water
If you discover that your pipes are totally icy or practically nearing that phase, transform off the main water valve right away. You will normally locate this in your basement or utility room near the heating unit or the front wall surface closest to the street. Transform it off immediately to avoid additional damage.
With even more water, more ice will pile up, which will at some point lead to burst pipes. If you are unclear concerning the state of your pipes this winter season, it is best to call a professional plumber for an inspection.
All homeowners that live in warm climates have to do their ideal to winterize their pipes. Failure to do so can lead to catastrophe like icy, broken, or burst pipelines. If the hot towels do not aid remove any resolving ice in your pipes, bowling warm air directly right into them may help. Transform off the primary water valve right away if you notice that your pipelines are completely icy or practically nearing that stage. With even more water, even more ice will load up, which will eventually lead to break 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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