Tips to protect your home during a freeze

• Insulate pipes.  Insulate all hot and cold piping either in the attic of the crawl space under your home and exterior walls if they are accessible with snap on foam insulation.
• Heat pipes.  Consider wrapping problematic pipes with UL approved heat tape that has a built in thermostat to prevent overheating.  Follow all instructions that come with the tape to prevent a fire hazard.
• Sprinkler system.     Turn off your sprinkler system and if possible, blow compressed air through the system to drain excess water.
• Drip faucets.  Drip both hot and cold at the kitchen and bathroom faucets.  This keeps water moving through the pipes and relieves pressure in the pipe in the event they should freeze.  Pay special attention to any faucets that are on outside walls.
• Cabinets.  Open cabinet doors under sinks in the kitchen and bath if the cabinets are on exterior walls to allow heat from inside your home to circulate.
• Laundry room.  If there isn’t a faucet to drip in the laundry room set your washing machine on warm and start the fill cycle periodically for a few minutes to run water through the pipes.
• Garage.  Keep garage door closed during extremely cold weather
• Foundations.  If your home has a crawl space make sure the foundation is completely enclosed and fill any gaps in the foundation wall with caulking or expanding foam.  If there are foundation vents either close or cover them during extreme cold weather.
• Garden hose.  Disconnect and drain all garden hoses
• Exterior faucets.  Cover faucets with insulated foam covers. Or if possible, cut off water to exterior faucets and open faucets to drain or install exterior faucets with water cut off valve to the faucet inside the foundation wall.
• Check for leaks.  Once the weather has warmed up, turn off any dripping faucets and check for leaks.
• Locate water shutoff.  Should a water line freeze and burst, you need to shut off your home’s water supply immediately.  Make sure everyone in the home knows where the shut off valve is located.

• Clean gutters.  Full gutters increase your chance of having ice form on your roof. 

• Protect your water well.  Add a heat lamp to your well house with a thermostat controller. (This is a stockable item at Reeh Plumbing)

• Locate breaker for water well.  If there is no customer shut off to your home and you have a water line burst, you can turn off the water simply by tripping the breaker to your well.  Make sure to label the breaker for your well in your breaker box and be sure everyone in the home knows where that breaker is located.

• Exterior Tankless water heater. If you do not lose electricity you really don’t have to do anything. The heaters have built in safety functions to keep them from freezing. In the event you lose electricity you should take the following steps: 1-unplug the unit from the electrical outlet in the bottom of the outside cabinet, 2- turn off the hot and cold valves going into and out of the unit, 3-remove the caps on the isolator valves and turn on the hot and cold valves (these are the valves directly above the shut off valves). This will allow pressure to be relieved from the heat exchanger and drain the unit. Be careful as hot water will be released on the hot side as it drains down. When the electricity is restored reverse the process to put your unit back in service. If water does not flow into your unit, the lines leading up to the cut off valves have probably frozen. These can be thawed using a household hair dryer applying moderate heat on the pipes themselves.