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Home Projects - Winterizing Your Home’s Plumbing
Winterizing Your Home’s Plumbing
Resident submission by Mike Healey
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The onset of winter’s cold temperatures can catch homeowners unaware in regards to their plumbing. Here are two common problems which plumbers in Spanish Fork have observed.
Concerning Garden Hoses:
It's easy to leave the garden hose connected to the spigot too late into the season. All it takes are a few sudden temperature drops overnight and the water freezes, causing the hose, your interior pipes and/or the spigot to burst or crack. This is not usually noticed until spring, when the ice thaws into a flooded basement. Be sure to disconnect and drain all your hoses, and turn off the shut-off valve inside your home (if you have one) prior to freezing temperatures settling into the valley. (Unless, of course, you prefer to gamble with baptizing your basement in the spring).
Concerning the Plumbing Below the Kitchen Window:
For kitchen sinks placed against an exterior wall of the home, the piping can be adversely affected during cold spells. Insulation can only do so much. Every now and then, winter gives us a prolonged deep dive into particularly frigid temperatures. When daytime temperatures linger around 10 degrees, and night temperatures drop below zero, pipes within exterior kitchen walls may not be adequately buffered from outdoor temperatures to prevent freezing. In these instances, it is not a bad idea to open up all your kitchen cupboards before retiring for the night. This allows room-temperature air to come in contact with the walls (and therefore the piping) behind the cupboards. This buffers the extremity of a temperature drop within exterior walls and thus helps prevent the pipes from freezing.
In addition to this, gently turn the tap on and allow it to slowly drip throughout the night. Flowing water is less likely to freeze than sitting water. Taking these preventative measures can spare you the unpleasant possibility of finding yourself in your slippers one chilly morning without water for your anticipated cup of hot chocolate.
