winterize a house || It is known as the process to prepare a house or any kind of property to remain vacant during the winter season. While you are away on vacation during the entire winter, looking after the house can become extremely difficult and the pipes and hoses in your home can freeze due to the extreme cold in some places. Hence, taking relevant precautions might help you to avoid the given problems and you can enjoy your vacation without having to worry about anything back home.
Here are some of the most effective measures that homeowners can take to ensure that their home is winterized properly.
Using an antifreeze liquid|| winterize a house
One of the best ways to winter-proof your home is by using a substantial portion of antifreeze liquid solutions. This is regarded as the first step in your checklist of winterizing your home. You can pour a small amount of this within the toilets and sinks in your house.
Even though you have flushed the toilet and cut off all supply of water, the chances of water still remaining in the taps, below the sinks and toilets is quite high. Therefore, to ensure that the water trapped beneath the toilets and sinks do not freeze, using antifreeze liquid might help you effectively to get rid of this concern.
However, you should refrain from using the similar antifreeze that you might use for your car as several safe and non-toxic variants of these items are available in the market that have been specially designed for winterizing the pipes, such as PRIME GUARD Ethyl Alcohol RV Antifreeze (available at Home Depot).
You must add antifreeze to winterize your drainage system because you can’t blow air into it. Additionally, you’ll require a lot of it. An ordinary home may use 15 to 20 gallons. To save money, you can buy non-toxic antifreeze in boxes online. Every fixture in your house, excluding your toilets, should have a 1/2 gallon of antifreeze poured into the drain.
Put a 1/2 gallon of water in the tank for toilets (not the bowl). Flush the toilet after that. Fill the tank with 1 gallon of water before flushing an older, low-efficiency toilet. In addition, don’t forget to pump antifreeze into the floor drains in your basement. An industry-recommended 1/2 gallon of antifreeze should be put into each of your floor drains.
Apart from using antifreeze, there are also other tips and tricks that you might use to winterize your home.
Covering the pipes that are outside
Outdoor pipes and hoses are the most obvious items that are at the highest risk of being frozen and these are considered as the most imperative part of a home that are required to be winterized effectively. In case these are filled with water when the winter comes, they could either expand or freeze and also rupture.
However, if the temperature is not too cold for a long time, you can also opt for a Styrofoam or an insulated cover of faucet as it might be regarded as one of the cheapest solutions to avoid any kind of damage. Although people living in areas that tend to remain cold for a significantly longer time, it will become necessary to cut off all supplies of water to the outside faucets and drain the water. This will be the only way to ensure that the outside pipes have not been frozen.
Inspecting the roof|| winterize a house
Hot air is prone to rise and therefore, it is important that you have effectively winterized your home and especially your roof. If you are accustomed with a ladder, it is advised to meticulously look at the shingles and ensure that no holes are noticeable on the roof. While you have climbed up the ladder to inspect the roof of your house, you may as well clean all the leaves that might have fallen on your roof out of the gutters. You should know that the clogged gutters tend to accumulate excessive water and it might become a significantly big problem, especially when it is frozen.
Winterizing the sprinkler
The majority of sprinkler systems use PVC piping, which can burst under certain circumstances while being rather flexible (or wrong). It is preferable to err on the side of caution even though the earth may be adequate insulation from a relatively mild freeze.
Depending on how your sprinkler system is constructed, several actions may be required to winterize it. However, it normally follows the same procedure: After turning off the system’s water supply, drain the remaining water from it. If your sprinkler system has a timer, you might also wish to turn it off. Your owner’s manual ought to have a section with directions for winterization if you’re unclear about how to proceed.
winterize a house
Homeowners should always be extremely proactive when leaving their property irrespective of the fact it is for a long or short time. In case you are not accustomed with how to proceed about the process, you should contact a professional organization known to operate within the similar business landscape to save your home from winter. Tags# winterize a house Read more..
[…] To be completely honest, very few signs can indicate that the pipes of a washing machine have become frozen. One of the most relevant ways to understand the same is that you will notice no water is being drained out from the machine. Apart from that, you could also see that discolored water is being flown out from the drain and it is leaking from the washer. In case you suspect that the pipes have been frozen, you should attempt to check for any kind of blockages. In addition to that, you can also try to thaw the frozen water or drain with the help of a dryer or any kind of heat generating machine. Also Read…… […]