DIY Plumbing Tips for the Upcoming Cold Snap

A cold snap can freeze the water in your pipes overnight. As water freezes, it expands, which exerts intense pressure on the pipes. Old, damaged, or unprepared plumbing can be burst, cracked, or split by the quick icy expansion.

Do-It-Yourself Tips to Guard Against a Cold Snap

To help your pipes stand up to the cold snap and resist damage from freezing, follow these DIY tips:

• Insulate: You can protect your pipes from freezing just like you would yourself by insulating them. You can purchase pipe insulation to wrap around accessible pipes. If you cannot make it to the store to get pipe insulation, wrapping newspaper around the pipes might not be as great, but it is better than nothing.
• Raise the temperature: All of the pipework in your home is subject to freezing during an intense cold snap. To protect the pipes within your home, turn up your thermostat. The warmer air in your home will permeate into and through the walls, ceiling, and flooring, providing some warmth to the pipes. You might risk running your electricity bill up some, but it will ultimately be less expensive than having to pay for repairs or replacements due to a frozen, burst pipe. Along these same lines of thinking, see if a local heating system maintenance company can stop by today to inspect your heater. It needs to be up to the task of keeping you and your home’s pipes warm in this cold snap!
• Open up: If your home has cabinets installed directly on the walls, open those right up as the cold snap begins and do not close them until it ends. Plenty of pipes are in the walls just on the other side of your cabinets. A closed cabinet effectively keeps the room temperature air way from them, though. By opening them up, you allow warmer air to get closer to the pipes.
• Run the tap: Wasting water is rarely good idea, unless there is a forecasted cold snap. Turn each faucet on ever so slightly. Just a hair’s width of water flow reduces the chance of the pipe freezing and bursting. As with the thermostat tip, this tap water tip might raise your water utility bill, but it will be better than expensive pipework repairs.

Frozen Pipes? Act Fast & Call (630) 425-8995

If you do find that your pipes freeze during the cold snap, then you need to act quickly to get them fixed. The longer you wait, the more likely the freeze will cause a break, which also spreads more and more as time goes on.

You will likely know if your pipes are frozen if you are shivering in your own home, you get little to no water when the tap is turned to the max, and/or you hear water leaking through the walls. Call (630) 425-8995 to connect with Precision Plumbing Sewer Drain Cleaning in Wheaton. We keep a flexible schedule and a full staff of plumbing experts so we can complete many same-day jobs.