Winter is the coldest season of the year. During this time, you’ll find most people wrapped up in warm clothes and indoors sipping cups of hot chocolate. It’s about aiming for the utmost comfort. However, so many things could go wrong that interfere with your desire for comfort. One of these things is your plumbing. It’s one of the systems you’ll heavily rely on during winter.
It’s advisable to prepare your plumbing for the winter months. It’ll prevent hiccups during this period. All you require to do is perform a maintenance routine.
Here’s a checklist to assist you with the maintenance:
Get A Plumber
Plumbing is a system that requires skills to cater to it. As a homeowner, diagnosing and rectifying plumbing issues can be challenging. Hence, the first item on your checklist should be to hire a plumber.
As you do this, ensure your hire an emergency plumber who will be at your beck and call no matter the time of the day. You could get a plumbing emergency on one winter evening and want it addressed as soon as possible since it interferes with your comfort.
Also, ensure that they’re located within your locality. It increases the convenience of their services. You don’t want to wait six hours for the plumber to reach you.
Last but not least, ensure they’re qualified for the job and have experience dealing with winter-related plumbing issues. The experience will help them identify and rectify issues quickly and correctly, even with all the snow.
Insulate Your Pipes
The extremely low temperatures during winter tend to affect pipes.
The water in your pipe could freeze, interfering with the water supply to your home. Here, there’ll be regular expansion and contraction due to changing temperatures. It’ll increase the pressure in your pipes, causing them to burst open.
Therefore, it’s important to maintain the water temperature in your pipes. You can achieve this by insulating your pipes. Pipe-insulating materials are readily available at your local hardware store. You can also tap the experts, such as emergency plumber Marshall, TX, to do the insulation.
Inspect Your Plumbing Pipes
As winter approaches, it’s important to inspect your pipes. Doing this will help you identify and address issues before they cause havoc during winter. Here, be on the lookout for pipe leaks and clogging. Check all your plumbing pipes, whether in the basement or attic, especially if you live in an old house. Watch this video to learn more about common plumbing problems with old houses:
It’d also help to replace any worn-out pipes. Should you proceed to use them during winter, when there’s adverse weather, there’s a high likelihood they won’t survive these months.
Once you’ve inspected and repaired your pipes, cleaning out your plumbing, especially the drains, is advisable. It’ll prevent blockage during winter.
Check Your Water Heater
In the cold season, you and your family rely heavily on the water heater for hot showers. There’s less likely that you want to take a cold shower when it’s freezing. Therefore, inspect your water heater.
It’s best to let your plumber inspect this and ensure it’s working as it should. You want to ensure optimum performance since cold temperatures put a strain on water heaters.
You’ll find that the heaters will take longer to heat your water. Imagine a situation where you use a worn-out water heater during winter. It’ll take ages for your water to heat, making it inconvenient.
It’d help flush out this system once you ensure it runs appropriately. You don’t want any debris to cause blockage and interfere with your hot showers.
Identify The Shut Off Valves
Plumbing issues can arise at any given time, and they vary. There are situations where an issue could arise, e.g., a pipe burst or leak.
Since water is still in supply, you’re likely to waste a lot of water, and it might also cause water damage. Yes, you’ve called your plumber, and they’re on the way. However, water is flooding your home. In this case, the only solution is shutting off the water supply. How will you do this if you don’t know the location of your shut valves?
Based on this, be sure to identify the location of your shut-off valves. Also, learn how to operate them; your plumber can assist you.
Check Your Outdoor Water Systems
This tip is ideal if you have outdoor water use, like irrigation and cleaning. In this case, you rely on a sprinkler system and garden hose to get water to where you need it.
During the winter months, highly consider turning off these systems. They’re likely to be covered in snow, and the water will freeze.
Imagine a situation where water is running through your garden hose. Due to the cold temperature, the water freezes. Since the hose is covered in snow, there’s a high likelihood of pressure imbalance in the pipe, causing it to burst. In such situations, you’re less likely to identify the issue with all the snow. It’ll lead to water wastage, considering it’s still flowing, adding to your water bills.
Therefore, highly consider turning off all your outdoor water systems during winter.
Conclusion
Plumbing is a home service provision you rely on for various things, from cooking to cleaning. Therefore, it must always be in top condition. There are times when their utility is threatened, e.g., during winter and adverse weather. However, this shouldn’t worry you anymore; this article has made a maintenance checklist to help you prepare your plumbing system and ensure it will remain in good working order for the winter.
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