How to Winterize Your Pipes

Winterizing your plumbing pipes is a good idea if you live in an area that gets temperatures below freezing during the winter months. If water freezes in your pipes, it will expand and potentially cause cracks and breakages. This can cause some catastrophic damage to a home, especially if the issue isn’t caught and resolved quickly.

There are some winterization steps you can take regardless of your circumstances, but they become especially important if you have a seasonal home that will be empty throughout the winter, or for long periods of time. Here’s a quick overview of some of the steps you can take to winterize plumbing in Colorado Springs, CO if you have a seasonal home:

• Shut off the water: Find the main water valve and shut it off, then turn off the water heater and water pump. If you don’t have water inside the tank throughout the winter when it’s not going to be in use, this will help you protect the most important heating elements inside the tank.
• Open up taps and valves: Go around the home and open up all taps and drain valves, and make sure you keep a checklist so you know you hit them all. If you leave taps closed, it could create a vacuum that traps water inside the pipes over the winter, which could result in expansion and pipe breakage.
• Blow out water: Get an air compressor and use it to blow out any excess water that was still sitting in the pipes.
• Discharge hot water tank: Open up your hot water tank’s drain valve and let it completely discharge until the tank is empty. If there is no floor drain in the area near the water tank, connect a garden hose to the drain valve and run the water to a safe location where it will not cause any water damage.
• Drain holding tank: If there’s any water left in the holding tank, drain it out, particularly any that’s in the rubber diaphragm, which is used along with the water tank to create the necessary water pressure in the system. To take some extra steps to prevent potential freezing, you can add some antifreeze into the jet pump case to prevent any remaining water from freezing during the winter.
• Flush toilets: Flushing the toilets will help you remove as much water as possible from the toilet bowl and the tank. If you’re unable to remove all of the water in this way, this is another place where you can add some antifreeze as a preventative measure to keep it from freezing, which could crack the toilet.
• Drain traps: If there are any sinks or tub drains that have drain traps, those are also spots where you can add some antifreeze to prevent any water that gets trapped there from freezing over the winter.

For more information about some of the steps you can take for safe and secure winter pipes in Colorado Springs, CO, we encourage you to contact Affordable Rooter today.

Categorised in: Winterization

This post was written by Writer