What To Do During The Winter
The presence of very low cold temperatures can cause several emergency issues for your plumbing, from freezing your pipes to causing your boilers to shut down. As the temperature drops even more and the weather becomes colder, these risks increase, especially the chances of freezing and flooding.
Because you can’t control the weather, you can’t eliminate all of these risks. But you can follow certain simple measures that could reduce the occurrence of these risks, and significantly prevent future emergency plumbing problems.
What makes these preventive measures extremely valuable is that they require no professional skill or experience, so you can avoid unnecessary expenditure in contracting a professional plumber London. These measures are easy to carry out, and they will ensure that come the deepest winter, the chances of getting a frozen pipe or faulty boiler will be greatly reduced, and you can stay comfortably warm in your home.
How can you protect your plumbing pipes?
When winter comes, and the temperature plunges significantly, one of the biggest plumbing risks is your pipes becoming frozen. This issue is common mostly with your external pipes. Once these pipes get frozen, they are unable to transport water, causing the water to back up inside the house and result in your home becoming flooded. Also, when water is frozen, it expands and puts a lot of pressure on the pipe joints, finally causing the pipes to burst if the services of a plumber is not contracted in time.
To prevent your pipes from freezing, you can employ the use of insulated foam in lagging your outdoor pipes. If you’ve done this before, it is important you have it checked, as the lagging grows ineffective as time passes, and need to be refreshed. As this procedure is easy and inexpensive (lagging can be bought cheaply at any DIY store close to you), you should renew the lagging every winter.
Don’t only give attention to outdoor pipes when lagging your pipes. Pipes in unheated parts of the house such as cellars are also at risk of becoming frozen if ignored.
How can you protect your outdoor taps?
Your outdoor taps need an isolated shut off valve. If you don’t have this, have one purchased and fixed for you. You can contact our engineers at 4D Plumbing and Heating to get this done for you.
As the temperature drops, it becomes unlikely that you will have any need to bring in water from outside your home, so you isolate your outdoor taps by turning the taps open and letting in water from the pipes drain off before shutting the taps. The absence of water in the pipes means your pipes are unlikely to become frozen and cause several plumbing problems over the winter. This method also applies if you have a garden hose attached to your tap. Properly drain the water in the pipe, and disconnect your hose. You can have it stored in your garage or a storage shed until the cold passes.
If you are unable to isolate your outdoor tap, installing a remote stop tap such as Surestop is a good alternative that allows you to isolate your taps and prevent them from freezing.
How can you protect your condensate pipe?
A condensate pipe is a feature of condensing boilers. To describe it, it is a pipe that leads from your boiler to outside your home or workplace and carries away all moisture produced in the system. If the temperature plunges, and the moisture within your condensate pipe freezes, your boiler will be forced to breakdown, depriving you of heat and hot water, possibly in the middle of winter.
Lagging the exterior of your condensate pipe is important once again in keeping them from freezing. Keep close attention on any previous lagging, and have it refreshed as soon as it begins to deteriorate. You can also use warm water or hot water bottle to warm your pipes when they get cold.
How can you protect your drains?
When leaves and pebble and other debris are allowed to block your drains, they become unable to handle large quantities of water, causing your property to become flooded in the presence of continuous rainfall or melting snow/frozen water.
To prevent such a situation, it is recommended you have your drains properly inspected and cleared of any debris before the onset of winter. Also, ensure you repair or replace any damaged or rusted grates so that larger items do not pass through them and into the drains, causing the drains to become blocked. Leaving your gutters blocked also results in the accumulation of water on your property, and eventual flooding if it isn’t cleared out on time.
Check your drains regularly; sweep out any fallen leaves and debris from your property. Get a plumber to take a close professional look if you suspect there could be blockages in certain areas of your drain.
Why are these actions important?
All the measures discussed above are simple and require no plumbing training or expertise to carry it out successfully. The methods are also inexpensive and can be completed in a single day if you choose to carry out it at once and stay warm and comfortable throughout the winter.
Having a burst pipe, and waking to find your home flooded are two situations that could cause great damage not only to the inside of your home but the outside and surrounding parts also. Having your boiler develop a fault and shut down in the middle of a very cold winter is dangerous, both to your health and the integrity of your central heating system.
So some planning is essential to make sure you avoid all of these plumbing issues, especially if it should become difficult to get in touch with an emergency plumber London during very cold weather. Sufficient planning not only saves you time and money but ensures you don’t run out of heat and hot water during the winter.
If you need help with the measures we’ve listed in this guide, including other technical services such as replacing your worn or damaged grate, installing a Surestop or conducting drain investigations, you can simply send a message to us.
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