Leaky pipes
Nothing can be more aggravating than waking up on a freezing morning anticipating a hot shower, then being denied the pleasure when no water comes out. Temperatures during the winter months can easily freeze pipes. If you don’t want to repeat this scenario, here are some suggestions to help keep your pipes from freezing over during the winter.
1. Insulate your pipes. Insulation is the key to keeping your pipes from easily freezing during the wintertime. However, it is important to realize that insulation is not meant to add heat to your pipes, but rather retain the heat that is already in the piping.
Fiberglass insulation tends to provide the best results for insulating pipes during the colder months. They can be hard to use, though, because they tend to irritate eyes, skin and even your lungs. Another option would be rubber insulation. Rubber insulation is less expensive than fiberglass and is easier to work with, but tends to not work as well during the winter time because it doesn’t provide any barriers to vapor.
If there are exposed pipes underneath your home, or outside, you could also use insulation “tubing”. Tubing provides good insulation, and is easier to work with than fiberglass. Remember to keep pipe insulation tape handy for areas that are harder to fit piping over.
2. If you know of a room that tends to get colder air than the rest of your home, try using windshield washer fluid down the sinks. Pour a cup full of windshield washer fluid into the shower drains or sink, and let it sit there through out the night. This will create an anti-freeze effect so that your pipes won’t freeze during the night before you can run water through the pipes.
3. Keep the cabinet doors open underneath the sinks in your home. This allows warm air from the room to circulate underneath the sink and around the pipes. Make a mental note to open the cabinets in the bathrooms and kitchen before you go to bed at night on colder nights.
4. A freeze alarm can be helpful to vacationers or those who are away from their home for weeks at a time. Freeze alarms monitor the temperature of your home and are programmed to alert yourself or a neighbor if the temperature drops below where you would like it to. That way if your home has a power failure, or it gets really cold, you can get someone to your home to fix the problem instead of coming home to busted pipes and a big headache trying to fix all the damage it caused.
5. Outside hoses should be turned off during the winter months. Turn off the water supply valve for the outside tap, and drain all the standing water from the pipe so it doesn’t freeze in there. Keep the tap open during the winter, and when the weather turns warmer again you can close the tap and turn the water supply valve back on.
