Winter weather brings dangers for your home’s plumbing: damage from frozen pipes, damage to your roof, and expensive repairs if you don’t winterise your home properly.
Get your home ready for the winter as early in the autumn as you can, either by yourself or through professional help.
Insulate Exposed Pipes
Frozen pipes can be the most frustrating and indeed costly plumbing problem you’ll ever have to deal with. In a worst case scenario, the frozen pipe could burst, leading to expensive repairs and extensive water damage. The good news is, you can fight back. Here’s how to protect your pipes from the cold this winter weather. Start insulating them before winter.
Pipes that aren’t heated can burst when water freezes and expands, so you can often protect them with foam insulation jackets or heat tape – or install frost-proof hose bibs.
Figure out pipes that are uncovered in your attic and crawl spaces that could be encased in ice if a freeze happens — look for pipe insulation sleeves at your hardware store to protect your pipes and prevent them from freezing. Heat tape will give extra protection; just wrap it around your pipes with some zip ties to the hose bibs.
Turn Off Water at the Source
When leaving a house or cottage vacant for a number of weeks in the winter, a sure way to prevent pipes from freezing is to shut off the water supply. In dwellings that are connected to a municipal water supply, you will find this valve either indoors (in basement, garage, laundry room areas) or – if possible – on an exterior wall of the house.
Removing garden hoses and turning off outdoor faucets. And draining the water heater could prevent its heating elements from burning out prematurely.
Although home owners seldom think of them when their house gets cold for the first time during fall, frozen pipes can be one of the most expensive wintertime plumbing problem and a genuine nightmare.
By insulating properly your home and following few simple steps, you have a chance to prevent protecting you from a terrible costly scenario.
Schedule a Plumbing Inspection
Homeowners know that calling a professional plumber for periodic inspections is crucial to protect their properties from future problems. A good plumber can detect and solve problems that a common man cannot see and that, eventually, might cause unnecessary expenditures.
Plumbing inspections include a visual examination of pipes, fixtures and drains to detect evidence of damage or corrosion, or the presence of leaks. In addition, water pressure may be tested to check for problems such as blockage, or clogging due to rust or scale formation in the lines. Anti-freeze solutions may be used to help prevent freeze-ups or blockages that could result from an unusually harsh winter.
Plumbers will be able to spot most issues as well as suggest ways to upgrade your home by installing, say, water-saving appliances, new water heaters and smart home leak detectors. Have an inspection done before the late fall season to avoid home damage from winter temperatures – and, during the meantime, clear up areas such as below sinks and closets so that the plumbers, when they do come in, will be able to easily inspect pipes, saving time and money laden efforts.
Contact a Plumber
If you do not want to pay for costly winterizing your home’s plumbing, or if you do not want to come back to a burst of pipes and other water damage, you should winterise your home’s plumbing.
And if your home doesn’t have central heat, pipes that are exposed to the elements can freeze. Bringing attention to any exposed pipes in your home in the fall and filling them with insulation might help protect them from the overnight cold. A plumbing inspection performed by a professional plumber may uncover some problems that will lead to problems in the winter, which can be addressed before they become bigger problems.
Damage from frozen pipes can take a big bite out of your budget when they burst so carefully winterise your plumbing and keep yourself out of hot water this holiday season. If you’re going away this winter, schedule a visit with a plumber before you go so they can winterise the house, send you off with peace of mind, and add peace of mind to the house you leave behind.
