Keeping your pipes from freezing during the upcoming winter should be high on your list of priorities when it comes to home maintenance tasks for this season. If your pipes freeze, there’s a good chance that they may burst. The water inside the pipe freezes and expands, which will cause the pipe to crack or break.
When a frozen pipe bursts, it can cause several problems. First of all, you’ll have issues restoring water service throughout your home. Secondly, a burst pipe can result in serious water damage. Fixing frozen pipes is an expensive and time-costly fix, usually followed with frustration. Here are some of our tips to keep your pipes from freezing.
3 Tips to Prevent Your Pipes from Freezing
The frigid winters in Maryland are something you cannot control, but you can take control to prevent damage from frozen pipes. Here are a few ways to prevent your pipes from freezing:
- Open under-sink kitchen and bathroom and cabinet doors – When you open up the cabinet doors, this allows warmer air to surround your pipes. With the doors open, the pipes will be near room-temperature air instead of being closed in with cold air, like a refrigerator. Just be sure to tuck away cleaning chemicals if you have pets or small children.
- Close main garage doors that goes outside – Especially if your main water lines run through the garage, this will prevent your main lines from freezing.
- Let water drip from the faucet – Moving water is less likely to freeze. Even just a little trickle can save you the hassle and costly expense of your pipes freezing and bursting.
These three ways are simple yet very effective in preventing your pipes from freezing. A little action taken can go far in protecting your home!
How to Protect Your Pipes from Freezing Long-Term
The following are a few tips that you should follow to help prevent your pipes from freezing this winter:
- Insulate your pipes – Pipes that are not hiding in the walls are exposed to cold air, which can be an issue if they are located in areas of the home that aren’t typically heated, like the basement. While you can attempt to insulate your pipes on your own to help keep cold air from penetrating the pipes and freezing any water within them, a professional will be able to do so more effectively.
- Insulate your walls – If your home isn’t properly insulated, heat is going to escape and cold air will be able to penetrate your walls more easily. By ensuring that your walls are properly insulated, you’ll reduce the risk of cold air reaching the pipes within your walls.
- Keep your heat on – If the heat in your home remains on, the air will never drop to a temperature at which frozen pipes become an actual risk. While this won’t be that difficult to do when you’re at home (odds are you’re going to use the heat when temperatures drop to freezing levels), you may not think about this if you go out of town for an extended period of time, such as on winter vacation. Make sure that you leave the heat high enough that the temperature in your home remains roughly around 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit. This will ensure that your pipes won’t freeze but also that you don’t waste too much energy heating an empty house.
- Turn your water off – If you know that you’re going to be out of town for a few days or an extended period of time during the winter and you don’t want to leave your heat on, then one option is to turn off the main water valve. While this won’t prevent your pipes from freezing over (there will always be a little water left in the pipes that can be frozen, after all), it will prevent potential water damage if a pipe does freeze and break.
