Winter is almost here. Is your home ready for another cold season in Ohio? We’ve put together a few tips for helping to winterize your home, in particular its plumbing.
- Remove hoses from hose bibs: Frozen hose bibs are a major plumbing issue over the winter. Thankfully, this freezing is easy to prevent. One way is to remove hoses from the hose bibs before the cold weather arrives. If the water still inside a hose freezes, it will go right up into the hose bib and cause it to freeze as well.
- Shut off outdoor faucets: Each of the outside faucets should have an individual shut-off valve inside the house along its supply line. Turn off the water at this shut-off valve, then go outside and open up the faucet to bleed out any water still inside it. This will help stop faucet and pipe freeze over the winter. (If your faucets don’t have individual shut-off valves, give us a call. We can retrofit your old outdoor faucet with a frost-free one.)
- Clean out the gutters: Clogged gutters and downspouts during winter can freeze up and create ice dams—and that’s not good news for the roof of your house. Water that moves more slowly because of leaves and other build-up in the gutters will freeze easier, so take some time to get the gutters cleared out so the water can move quickly.
- Insulate exposed pipes: Frozen indoor pipes are one of the biggest worries a home faces in a cold winter. To help stop pipe breeze and bursting pipes, put insulating sleeves around the exposed piping. You can purchase this insulation at most hardware stores.
If you run into pipe freeze trouble during the winter, don’t attempt to thaw the pipe on your own, as this can lead to bursting. Call our emergency plumbing specialists and let them handle the job so your plumbing won’t suffer from extra damage.
Ken Neyer Plumbing, Inc. is here to help you with any plumbing needs you may have over the winter in Cleves, OH or elsewhere in the Cincinnati Area.