Don’t Let Your Pipes Burst this Winter
Is this severe winter weather causing you to hibernate? We don’t blame you. It’s important to remember that the home that keeps you safe from this wicked cold front, is also in need of some major TLC when below-freezing temperatures roll in. To keep it running smoothly, take proper precautions to ensure a major disaster doesn’t leave you out in the cold. We want to touch on a very vital part of your home - the pipes!
Different types of pipes are at different levels of risk for freezing. During extreme cold, more trouble lies for the pipes that are in specific locations of the home. Take special notice of ones that are located in unheated areas of the home, on the exterior of the home, and within exterior walls. If frozen, these pipes have a high chance of bursting, causing flooding and costly water damage to your home.
Things you can do to prevent this from happening to you:
Prioritize your pipes. Know whether your pipes might be susceptible to intense cold. Keep an eye out for pipes in drafty areas and pipes that might be on an outside wall. Putting heat tape on pipes, installing heater lines, and insulating certain areas could help prevent freezing. Exterior faucets that you use to water your grass or clean your car need to be winterized. This means shutting off the interior valve and draining water out of the pipe.
Going on vacation? Take precaution. If you're going out of town for an extended period of time, you need to consider whether or not pipes could freeze while you're away. If you have a boiler system, you can leave it on at 55 or 60 degrees. If you will be away for a long time, you can also winterize your home, which means having a plumber come in and shut off the system to drain the water out of the pipes.
Shut the garage door. When you have pipes in your garage, shut the garage door as quickly as possible when coming in and out. Letting the cold or wind in could lead to the pipes freezing.
Frozen pipes are nothing to mess with. Taking simple measures like the ones listed will prevent you from the possibility of severe damage to your home. If a flood happens in your home or office, you need to act quickly. Call Taylored Restoration’s 24-Hour hotline for immediate assistance. We can extract the water and our certified technicians can test your dryness levels, move the contents of your home out safely, make repairs to your home and restore your furniture plus we'll put everything back together again for you so that you don’t have to deal with even more stress!