Snow-covered winter weather brings fun activities like sledding down the neighborhood hill or snowball fights in the back yard. At the same time, winter weather can be hard on your home. Excessively cold conditions can encourage the water lines in your plumbing to freeze and burst, which can result in significant water damage and enduring negative effects.

Once your pipes are frozen solid, you should call a plumber in Chelan and Wenatchee to fix them. Nevertheless, there’s multiple things you can try to keep this from happening – and even just a bit of prevention can go a long way.

What Pipes Are at a Higher Chance of Freezing

The pipes at the greatest risk of freezing are uninsulated water lines. Frequent locations for uncovered pipes are inside attic crawlspaces, near exterior walls, in the basement or even running underneath a modular home. Water lines that are not properly insulated are at the greatest risk.

How to Stop Pipes from Becoming Frozen in Your Home

Properly insulating uncovered water lines is a solid first step to keeping your pipes free of ice. You’ll often locate most of these materials from your local plumbing company, and might also already have some someplace in your home.

Try not to cover other flammable insulation materials where they may light on fire. If you don’t feel comfortable insulating the pipes by yourself, contact your local plumbing services professional in Chelan and Wenatchee to do the job.

If you do decide to insulate the pipes on your own, common insulation materials for pipes include:

  • Wraps or roll insulation: Most plumbers, hardware stores and big box retailers offer insulation – commonly fiberglass, foam wraps or pipe sleeves – that you can use to wrap or fit around your pipes. They are supplied in differing lengths and sizes to satisfy the needs of your home.
  • Newspaper: To a decent degree, newspaper can be used as an insulator. If the weather is getting colder and you aren’t able to add insulation in time, consider covering uninsulated pipes in this.
  • Towels or rags: If you aren’t able to add insulation and don’t have any newspaper to use, wrapping notably vulnerable pipes with towels or clean rags as a last-ditch effort may be just enough to keep the cold air from freezing the pipes.

One other preventative step you can attempt to keep pipes from freezing in your home is to fill any cracks that could allow cold air inside your home. Focus on the window frames, which can allow in surprisingly strong drafts. This not only will help to keep your pipes from freezing, but it will have the added benefit of making your home more energy efficient.

Five More Ways to Keep Your Pipes from Freezing:

  • Open the cabinet doors. Opening the cabinet doors beneath the sinks and other areas of your home with pipes will allow more warm air from the rest of the room to reach the pipes.
  • Letting water drip. Letting water flow by letting your faucets trickle even a small amount can help thwart frozen pipes.
  • Open interior doors. By opening doors between rooms or hallways, your home can be heated more evenly. This is particularly important if there’s a room that tends to be colder or hotter than the remainder of your home.
  • Close the garage door. The exception to the open doors recommendation is the garage door, which you should keep closed – particularly if your water lines are installed under the garage.
  • Keep the heat steady. Experts encourage setting the thermostat at a constant temperature and leaving it there, rather than allowing it to get cooler at night. Set it no cooler than 55 degrees.

How to Prevent Pipes from Freezing in an Unused Home

When you’re in your own home, it’s easy to know when something isn’t right. But what added steps can you take to keep pipes from freezing in an empty home or vacation home when the consequences from a frozen pipe might not be discovered for days or even weeks?

As with your primary residence, insulating any exposed water lines, opening interior doors in the home and winterizing the vacant home are the first steps to try at first.

Additional Steps to Prevent Pipes from Freezing in an Empty Home:

  1. Leave the heat on. Even though you won’t always be home, it’s best to leave the heat on – even if you turn the thermostat down colder than you would if you were there. As with a primary house, experts recommend keeping the temperature at no cooler than 55 degrees.
  2. Shut water off and drain the lines. If you’re going to be gone for an extended period of time or are winterizing a seasonal cabin or cottage, switching the water off to the house and emptying the water out of the water lines is one way to keep pipes from freezing and breaking. Try not to forget to clear the water out of any appliances, like the hot water heater, as well as the toilets. See to it that you clear out all the water from the pipes. If you are not sure of how to clear out the water from the pipes, or don’t feel comfortable handling it without any help, a plumber in Chelan and Wenatchee will be happy to offer support.