Winter Plumbing Problems: What You Absolutely Need To Know
Winter sucks. An unpopular opinion to some, but it's definitely hard to fault a good Australian Summer. Along with the freezing cold, overcast skies and torrential rain can come a myriad of problems around the house; namely with your plumbing.
Like you, most people head into winter and don't give a second thought to their plumbing or water services. But every winter, plumbers across Australia are inundated around this time with dire requests to come fix their hot water heater or reports of pipes that have cracked from frost. None of these are a cheap fix either!
So what should you be looking out for to protect yourself from this silent money pit?
1. Frozen Outdoor Plumbing
For most of Australia, chances are good it's not going to get cold enough to snow, but even a really bad frost can cause some damage to any of your outdoor pipes and plumbing. This is also true if you have any outdoor gardening equipment like inbuilt sprinklers, hoses, taps, or even a water tank.
To fix this, make sure that you find ways to insulate these from the weather. You can purchase things like caps to go over the top of your sprinklers and taps, as well as foam insulation that wraps around pipes. This insulation is especially pertinent in places like your hot water heater, where a pipe might be frozen overnight, then have scalding hot water run through it, causing rapid changes - A good way to get a crack in the pipe or worse, burst it.
2. Consider outer wall plumbing
Similar to your outdoor plumbing, these are all the pipes that lead from indoors to outside, that run in your walls. Think kitchen sinks, hot water services, or your washing machine.
The best thing you can do to prevent a pipe from bursting in the cold and doing huge amounts of damage to the inside of your walls is to use them often. This stops any water from building up or icing over. In an older house that's especially susceptible to the cold, you might even need to leave the tap on to drip overnight, providing a slow but steady stream of moving water.
3. Let your water heater build up to it
Your water heater has to work extra hard come the winter months, and if it's been 6 months since it's last use, it could struggle a bit.
The best way to make sure it doesn't break down on you is to start it slowly. Either put your heater on every couple days during Autumn to get it started again or slowly turn the heat up over a few weeks.
This is also a great time to double check your water heater and make sure that it's been serviced and is totally up to scratch for the colder months. Check things like your safety relief valve, sacrificial anode, and the general tank condition (including anything that looks corrosive).
4. Get your leaks fixed
Now is the perfect time to fix any leaking faucets or plumbing fixtures, especially in places like under sinks. The cold weather, combined with a heater and a bit of water is the best possible breeding ground for mold to start. So the best way to combat mold is to stop it at the source.
Apart from that, leaks also cost you a lot of money in water bills that you don't necessarily assume add up.
There's no telling how badly an older houses plumbing looks like, so if you're considering purchasing a property to live in, or especially if you want to move tenants in there, your safest option is to have a certified building inspector walk through to take a look first.
If you want to be safe, give our team a call on 1300 657 546 or book online today.