Every year, around this time of year, the cold weather sets in and causes pipes with water in them to freeze and break. The costs and inconvenience of drying out a flooded building are no small matter. Here are 7 easy winterization tips: 1) Don’t set your thermostat below 60: -Even if you’re away from your home, your home heating system needs to stay on and at a reasonable temperature. Sometimes we get a severe cold front that sets in with a vengeance. The temperature drops so rapidly and deeply that your home heating system cannot keep up with it. Remember, your thermostat is in the main part of your house and it doesn’t measure the temperature in the extremities of your house. If it’s 60° in your main hallway, it could well be close to freezing in other areas. Keeping the core temperature of your house at or above 60° gives you a margin of error for these instances. 2) Drain any evaporative/swamp cooler lines: -If youve got a swamp cooler don’t forget to turn off and drain the lines. Every year we see a couple of homes where the water lines to the evaporative coolers (which are usually above the insulation in the attic crawlspace) ruptures and soaks the insulation above your ceiling. This extra weight causes the ceiling to collapse into the room below and creates a huge mess. 3) Blow out your sprinkler system: -Frozen water in sprinkler systems can expand and rupture the line. If your water to this system is turned off but not blown out you won’t know youve got a problem until the following spring when you charge this system. Worst of all, because this water moves through the soil before it enters your basement, it carries all types of mold spores, fungus and bacteria and is often considered a “flood” in insurance policies.Which means it wont be covered unless you have flood coverage. 4) Insulate any external pipes: -In our climate there are not a lot of external pipes which are not already insulated. However, if youve got piping through your attic or in your crawlspace below the floor, they should be insulated. Often times these areas are not heated and it provides a prime target for the freezing weather to attack your plumbing. 5) Disconnect any external hoses from faucets: -Water in garden hoses can freeze which will cause the faucet to freeze which, in turn, will cause the piping just inside the house to freeze and rupture. 6) Clean out your rain gutters: -Your rain gutters are full of leaves this blocks the flow of snow melt from your roof. It causes a condition known as “ice-damming” whereby ice freezes and pries off shingles. This can compromise the integrity of your roof and cause water damage. 7) Get a water alarm system: -Put water sensors in your basement or in areas of the house where water might overflow and cause floods. We can’t emphasize this strongly enough: if you can catch a flood when it’s very small then it can be dried up quickly and without need to call a disaster restoration company.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 16:18:50 +0000
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