Winter Tips from the Professionals

[Admin]

I recently contacted a few of our professional plumbers about getting ready for winter, asking if they had any advice. As winter hits, it's important to stay on top of your plumbing maintenance. Here's some advice from the Pros.

One of the things I can think of is. If you have a crawl space with a pump in it. Make sure the crawl space is warm enough to keep the pump and plumbing from freezing. Either seal it up and heat it above 36° or buy a lot of heat tape and insulation.

Well an obvious one, if your hose Bibb isn't frost free, shut it off and drain it. If it is frost free make sure it grades to the outside. Other wise it could freeze and burst. If your leaving your cabin for the winter, drain the lines and blow them out with compressed air if you can, drain the HWT, and put plumbing antifreeze in the traps. Make sure your heat tape works, usually the heat tape has a light where it plugs in.

Most obvious things are to make sure your hoses are disconnected and crawl space and attic vent holes are closed or covered. Frozen water pipes lead to big money replacement issues if they burst. Thawing isn't cheap either. If you have a guest house, garage apt or pool house not being used shut off water supplies to fixtures either drain or blow out lines with air and drain toilet. Adding rv antifreeze to toilets and sink traps will ensure no frozen problems under the sink or in the toilet and the rv antifreeze is non toxic as well.

Keep your garage doors closed. Especially if there attached or under your home. If your using a wood stove or some other alternate source of heat and you have a hot water heating system run the hot water system periodically to prevent it from freezing.

John

If you have any winter advice to add to this thread please help us out!

 

[Z16chevelleguy]

Let us not forget to also drain any irrigation sysems. Nothing worst than a non planned skating rink in the backyard.

 

[dave5701]

Also on summer play homes, open faucets in shower, bath and kitchen. Even if you turn off water and drain from filter, sometimes water is trapped by vacuum at the faucets. This allows the water to drain completely out. If the entire house freezes (if heat turned off) the faucet pipes will freeze and burst. Quite a surprise when you turn the water on in the spring.

 

[House Doc]

FOR HOUSES THAT WILL BE VACANT!!

I use to winterize a lot of homes when I lived in Illinois. I would use a small compressor ( set at about 70-80 PSI) hooked up with an adapter to either the drain tap near the meter or ... after pulling out the meter (that needs to be drained also, as I've seen the bottom plate cracked by ice) directly into the meter connector. The air pressure helps the HWT drain quicker, and when it's empty acts as a storage tank for compressed air. Then starting at the highest sink or shower open the valves until the air is blowing free. Once it's blowing air close it and go to the next one. It's best to wait to flush the toilets until last or they will be bleeding air while you're trying to do the rest of the house.

Don't forget the washing machine and dishwasher. Start the washing machine and hit both hot and cold cycles until air is flowing. Same with the DW...start cycle and wait for air. You also need to use a shop vac to suck the drain of both units as they both hold water in them. Use the shop vac to drain the toilet tanks (after flushing) and bowls (if you have a blower on your vac stick the hose down in the toilet trap and most of the water will be blown out the trap). Then add your RV anti-freeze to trap. Also sink traps.

Irrigation systems can be drained the same way using air pressure.

One last thing.. check for "whole house" filters, or under sink RO filters as the canisters will need to be emptied or they will crack. If you have a water softener and you've used the air connector at the meter it should have drained when doing the above (assuming it was NOT set to "by-pass") That tank will split if not drained.

I think that about covers everything. But I'm getting old and it's been 10 years here in California. Anybody think of anything I've missed please post it up!
Good Luck!

 

[BobMaine]

Don't forget the boiler! Expansion tank - drain that too. I blow air back down through the radiator purge valves located at the end of each baseboard run. If you have kick space (under counter heaters with fans) you will need to figure out if they will drain on their own or you may have to disassemble and blow air through them. As mentioned above figure out how to turn off and drain the water coming into the house. Drilled well, will your pitiless valve be safe? Do you have a sewer pump (to pump to leach field) you might want to run some antifreeze into that.
I have made a "tool" that lets me connect to the dishwashers and ice machines and push antifreeze through them.