You hear the warnings every year when cold weather is on the way. Disconnect your hoses and cover your outdoor faucets. Open the cabinet doors under your sinks. Let all of the faucets drip.
It seems like Oklahoma has at least a full week of sub-freezing temperatures every winter. In 2011 Nowata even set a state record at -31 degrees! So what do you do when the precautions aren’t enough?
Here’s how to minimize damage and make the best of a bad situation when your pipes freeze.
Shut Off Your Water
The first thing to do, if you want to avoid a flood, is shut off your water main. If you happen to know where your home’s shutoff valve is, great. But most people don’t, so turning your water off at the curb is also effective.
Open Your Faucets
Opening your faucets will help alleviate some of the pressure on your pipes and minimize flooding if they burst. Open them to more than a trickle, but not all the way open. A healthy medium is good.
Thaw Your Pipes
This isn’t doable for everybody, but if your frozen pipes are exposed then thawing them with a hair dryer or space heater will help big time. If your home sits on a crawl space, this should be an easy task. Make sure to not use an open flame and only use a space heater if you can supervise it and keep it away from walls and other flammable materials.
Look for Leaks
Even with the water main turned off, there should still be enough pressure on the pipes to reveal where the leaks are once the blockage is thawed out.
Call Us!
Give LEE Plumbing a call at (918) 300-0404 to come repair your pipes and get your home back in order. We’ve been providing the Tulsa metropolitan area with exceptional plumbing services since 2003 and we look forward to helping you navigate this stressful situation.
Even if you didn’t find any leaks, you still need to let a plumber examine the pipes that were frozen. They may have been weakened by the experience and could still need to be replaced to prevent future failure.
