The first really cold night of the year has a way of catching people off guard.
One week you’re still spending afternoons outside. A few days later, temperatures are flirting with freezing and you’re trying to remember whether you ever disconnected the garden hose.
When it comes to plumbing, waiting until the forecast calls for the first hard freeze isn’t the best plan.
October is a much better time to prepare your home’s plumbing for winter — while there’s still plenty of time to fix anything that needs attention.
Start With the Garden Hose
This is probably one of the easiest winter plumbing precautions a homeowner can take, and it’s also one that’s commonly forgotten.
Disconnect your garden hoses from exterior faucets before freezing weather arrives.
Leaving a hose attached can prevent water from draining properly from the faucet assembly. When trapped water freezes and expands, it can damage the faucet or plumbing behind it.
The tricky part is that you might not immediately see the damage. Depending on where a break occurs, the real problem may become apparent later when the faucet is used again.
While you’re disconnecting hoses, take a minute to inspect the outdoor faucet. If it drips when it’s shut off or something doesn’t look right, October is a much better time to address it than January.
Know Where Your Vulnerable Pipes Are
Not every pipe in your home faces the same risk when temperatures fall.
Plumbing located inside conditioned areas of the house generally has plenty of protection. Pipes running through colder spaces deserve more attention.
That can include plumbing in crawl spaces, garages, unfinished basements, utility areas, exterior walls or other places where cold air can reach the pipes.
Older South Jersey homes can be particularly interesting in this regard. Houses get renovated and added onto over the decades, and sometimes plumbing ends up running through spaces that weren’t part of the home’s original heated envelope.
If you’ve had a pipe freeze before, that’s an especially good reason to figure out why it happened instead of simply hoping it doesn’t happen again.
Find Your Main Water Shutoff Before You Need It
Here’s a question every homeowner should be able to answer:
If a pipe burst in your house right now, could you shut off the water quickly?
If the answer is “I think so,” October is a good time to find out for sure.
Locate your home’s main water shutoff and make sure everyone who may need it knows where it is. Older valves can become difficult to operate after sitting untouched for years, so discovering yours doesn’t work properly during an active plumbing emergency isn’t ideal.
Stopping the flow of water quickly can dramatically limit the amount of damage caused by a burst pipe or major leak.
Winter Can Expose Problems That Were Already There
Cold weather doesn’t necessarily create every plumbing problem from scratch.
Sometimes it simply exposes a weakness.
A pipe connection that’s already deteriorating, an aging valve, a poorly insulated section of plumbing or a small existing leak can become a much bigger concern when freezing temperatures arrive.
That’s why preventative plumbing work matters. You’re not trying to predict every possible thing that could go wrong. You’re looking for the obvious vulnerabilities while there’s still time to do something about them.
Don’t Forget About Your Water Heater
As outdoor temperatures fall, your water heater becomes even more important to everyday life.
If you’ve already noticed inconsistent temperatures, unusual noises, rust, moisture around the tank or hot water that doesn’t seem to last as long as it once did, don’t wait for the middle of winter to investigate.
Nobody wants to discover the water heater has finally given up on a 25-degree morning.
A Little October Prep Goes a Long Way
Winter plumbing preparation doesn’t need to be complicated.
Disconnect the hoses. Check your outdoor faucets. Know where your shutoff is. Pay attention to plumbing located in colder parts of the house. And don’t ignore something simply because it’s “still working.”
The goal isn’t to worry about everything that could possibly happen this winter. It’s to take care of the things you can see coming.
If you’re not sure whether your home’s plumbing is ready for colder weather, Signature Plumbing serves homeowners in Mullica Hill and throughout the surrounding South Jersey area. We can help identify potential trouble spots and take care of problems before freezing weather puts them to the test.
Signature Plumbing | Mullica Hill, NJ
856-725-0241 | signatureplmb.com
Plumbing License #13309