Prepare for Winter: Five Essential Hacks to Protect Your Pipes From Bursting
Prepare for Winter: Five Essential Hacks to Protect Your Pipes From Bursting
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This great article following next about How to stop pipes from freezing during the winter is rather insightful. Check it out for your own benefit and decide what you think of it.
All property owners that live in pleasant climates need to do their ideal to winterize their pipes. Failing to do so can spell catastrophe like frozen, broken, or burst pipes.
Switch on the Faucets
When the temperature level drops and it appears as if the freezing temperature will certainly last, it will certainly help to activate your water both indoors and outdoors. This will keep the water moving via your plumbing systems. Furthermore, the movement will certainly slow down the freezing process. Significantly, there's no requirement to turn it on full blast. You'll end up throwing away gallons of water by doing this. Instead, go for regarding 5 decreases per minute.
Open Closet Doors Hiding Plumbing
It would certainly be useful to open cupboard doors that are camouflaging your pipes when it's cool outside. For instance, they could be somewhere in your cooking area or shower room. This will enable the cozy air from your heating system to circulate there. Because of this, you avoid these exposed pipelines from cold. Doing this tiny method can maintain your pipes cozy and also limit the possibly harmful results of freezing temperature levels.
Take Some Time to Cover Exposed Water Lines
One clever as well as very easy hack to warm up freezing pipes is to wrap them with warm towels. You can cover them first with towels. After protecting them in place, you can put boiling water on the towels. Do it slowly to allow the towels absorb the fluid. You can likewise utilize pre-soaked towels in hot water, just don't forget to put on safety gloves to secure your hands from the warm.
Try a Hair Clothes Dryer or Warm Weapon
When your pipes are nearly freezing, your dependable hair clothes dryer or warm weapon is a blessing. Bowling warm air straight into them might aid if the warm towels do not help dislodge any type of settling ice in your pipelines. Nevertheless, do not make use of various other items that create direct flames like a strike torch. This can result in a bigger disaster that you can not regulate. You may end up damaging your pipelines while attempting to melt the ice. And also in the future, you might even end up shedding your residence. Be careful!
Shut down Water When Pipes are Frozen
If you observe that your pipelines are entirely icy or virtually nearing that phase, turn off the main water valve promptly. You will generally discover this in your cellar 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 certainly pile up, which will eventually lead to burst pipes. If you are unclear about the state of your pipes this winter season, it is best to call an expert plumber for an examination.
All homeowners that live in pleasant environments need to do their best to winterize their pipelines. Failure to do so can lead to catastrophe like icy, broken, or burst pipelines. If the warm towels do not help displace any working out ice in your pipes, bowling hot air directly right into them may aid. Turn off the major water valve right away if you discover that your pipelines are entirely frozen or nearly nearing that stage. With more water, even more ice will pile up, which will ultimately 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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