Design Build Renovation Tips – Are Your Pipes Ready for Winter?

As a design build remodeling contractor in Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC, we’ve seen our share of easily preventable home maintenance issues.  Preventing freezing pipes in the winter is fairly easy if you know what to do.  This is a picture of a hosebib before it is installed. 

When water freezes in a copper pipe, the ice wins and the copper loses. It is essential therefore to get the water out of pipes in areas where freezing could occur.  This is a picture of a hosebib and the associated piping after water has frozen and burst the copper pipe.

To help protect your pipes this winter, follow these quick steps:

• First, inside the house, shut off the water coming into the hose bib line.
• Next, outside the house, take three steps:
  1. open the hose bib
  2. disconnect the hose
  3. remove or open the backflow prevention device.
• Next, open the drain device at the shut off in the house.
• Lastly, leave everything open. Sometimes it takes a while for the water to drain, and since there is no reason to close anything until the spring, it is safest to leave it all open.

As there are a number of different styles of valves, backflow devices, and so on, please feel free to ask us for help with this important preventative measure.

Guest Blog Post By:

Doug Horgan
VP of Best Practices