Are Your Pipes Ready for Winter?

For many in the country they have been buried under a mountain of snow and cold weather. While for us int he south it has been pretty warm. We don’t typically get our really cold weather until January or February. So that means we still have a little time to make sure that our pipes are ready for the colder temperatures.

There are several things that you can do to ensure that your pipes are ready if you haven’t done it yet. Some of the things you may already know about like fibreglass pipe insulation while others you may not. It just takes a little bit of time on your part. It is something that I do every year.

The easiest way to make to make sure your pipes don’t freeze would be to buy Heating cable. It helps keep them warm. I hadn’t heard of it before but my brother has and he said he has it on his pipes now.

For outside faucets you want to make sure you turn them off at the shutoff valves if possible. Make sure you drain it though. You also need to disconnect any hoses and wrap or cover the faucet itself. I always wrap the outside faucet and sometimes forget to take it off in the summer.

Make sure you seal around any holes or cracks. Be sure that you check and seal any place where a pipe goes in or out of your house. Also check that you have insulation between your floor joists. That last thing my brother told me about. I can’t even tell you what that even is.

If you happen to go out of town in the winter make sure you shut the main valve off. That will leave no room for any busted pipes while you are gone. I would also suggest leaving your heat on if you can. If we go out of town in the winter I leave the heat on just enough to keep anything from freezing but not enough to run for long periods of time.

In my opinion I would highly suggest you buy pipe warmer since it is the easiest and means you don’t have to worry so much once it is installed. That is what I am looking in to. When I say me, I actually mean my brother is getting it for me and installing it.

I had a busted pipe once and it was not pretty. I also had my hot water heater burst because of the cold. I can’t begin to tell you how horrible that was. I had just had surgery and came home thinking I was going to get a hot shower. It was and raining and all I wanted to do was curl up and cry. In fact I think I did do that, at least as best as I could.

If you haven’t thought about protecting your pipes now you should. The reason is you don’t want to wait until you discover that you needed it. By then you have something expensive to fix and then try to prevent from happening again.