Winterizing your outdoor faucets are important to ensure your water won’t freeze in pipes and break and create a nightmare of a mess to cleanup. It helps to understand the main problems that you may face as a homeowner if you don’t winterize your outdoor faucets.
Pipes can burst because when water freezes, it expands (by about 9%). If water freezes inside a pipe, it puts pressuring on the walls of the pipe. If the pressure becomes too much for the pipe, it can crack or break. Which can lead to major problems down the road.
To help prevent your pipes from cracking or breaking, it’s best to winterize them. To do this, you will need to shut off the water supply to the outdoor faucet. This allows you to eliminate any more water to flow into the pipes and therefore, drain the pipes of water.
Next you’ll want to drain the water from the pipes. Once the water has been turned off from the water supply valve, turn the outdoor faucet on to push any remaining water out.
Leave the faucet on until all the water has drained from the pipes. After water appears to have stopped flowing, leave the faucet on for a bit longer to ensure that all the water has drained. Once it’s been on for a bit and no water has come out of the faucet, then you can turn if off.
Once this is all complete, you’ve winterized your faucets and you have a better chance of your pipes not cracking or breaking from water left inside them during winter.
If you have questions or concerns about winterizing your outside faucets, call Connelly Plumbing Solutions. They are locally owned and operated right here in Kansas City. We will provide you with the information you need to make the proper decision about your appliance.
At CPS, we strive to help customers understand what is going on with their plumbing system and to give them the pros and cons of every option so that they can make the most educated decision.