Pipe Leaks During Winter
Winter is a time when your home as well as plumbing system is subjected to low and sometimes freezing temperatures. Your first thought should always be to keep yourself and your family protected and warm, but you should also think about the water leaks around your house that can be caused by the freezing temperatures. Preventing pipe leaks during winter is an important step that should be looked into during months prior. If you need advice or guidance contact your leaks and burst pipe specialists, or if you need insight on home remedies and prevention, read on.
Situations you should be aware of during Winter
Freezing Pipes
Frozen pipes are probably the worst plumbing problem that could ever arise. If you find yourself having frozen pipes, you won’t be able to get any water and worse you might get yourself into a bigger mess with a burst pipes and flooding in your home. If you want to avoid those unpleasant situations, you should always get all pipes that are located in unheated areas in your home insulated. But sometimes this won’t be enough to keep the pipes from freezing. Preventive measures must be taken in order to keep the water running and prevent frozen pipes. But if you see that there is a frozen pipe somewhere in your house, you should call a plumber immediately. Sometimes you might be able melt the ice with a heat lamp or a hair dryer and keep the pipe from bursting but you should remember never to use open flame or torches to thaw the pipe. This is a fire hazard situation and you will also damage the pipe.
Leaks
Sometimes it doesn’t take a frozen pipe to burst to cause you that unpleasant and expensive headache. You may be able to thaw the pipe if you catch it on time but that doesn’t mean you are out of the danger. If freezing and thawing occurs repeatedly, this will put a lot of stress on the pipes and then they will expand and contract a lot. With time passing, this will damage the pipes and cause unpleasant leaks. This is a very dangerous situation as you might not notice the leak for some time if it is located in an out of the way area. Pipe leaks during winter are highly problematic, and that even the smallest leak is able to cause great damages to your house if you don’t get it fixed on time.
Malfunctioning of the water heater
Cold weather can cause damage to other fixtures than only to your pipes and you should know that even the water heater might start to leak, especially if it is located in an area without heat as the basement and if it is an older model. Cold weather causes the metal to flex and contract with the temperature changes. If you see that your tank is failing, you should definitely get a new one (after you clean everything up, of course). You should keep an eye out for rust in your water or cracking, bulging or bending in the heater as those are signs that tell the heater is reaching its limits and it might not even make it through the winter. Immediately reach out to a plumber to make a professional assessment.
Problems with the roof
It is not only the plumbing inside your house that needs your attention, so do the outsides of your house. If there has been a heavy snow recently, you might have ice building up in the gutters and at the edge of the roof and those will prevent the snow to melt and drain to the ground. The water will start backing up and it will find a way to get inside your house and thus put the structural integrity of your roof at danger or cause inside damages. If you want to prevent this situation, you should get the snow cleared off your roof quickly but safely and also remove the ice that has built up around the roofs’ edges.
Don’t sit around and wait for the winter and the possible flooding. Preventing pipe leaks during winter is important, so call a plumber before the winter comes as they will be able to find all areas in your plumbing system that may be require attention. Therefore they can prevent all leaks and bursts before they even occur.
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