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Icicles hang off the stone archway over a pedestrian sidewalk along the Cultural Gardens on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. (Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer)
On Sunday, my neighborhood Giant Eagle was packed with shoppers fueling up in preparation for the coming cold snap. Yes, we’ll need comfort food and firewood to get through the frigid days ahead, but we also need to take steps to avoid frozen water pipes, because a burst pipe could turn a cozy nest into a big mess.
Pipes freeze due to quick drops in temperature, poor insulation and thermostats set too low, according to information on State Farm’s website. Both plastic and copper pipes can freeze and burst, and a cracked pipe can cause flooding, structural damage and mold.
When pipes freeze, water in the pipes turns to ice and expands, according to Roto-Rooter. The pressure causes cracks, and even a small one can leak 250 gallons in a day.
Frozen pipes are a serious concern over the next few days. Temperatures are forecast to plunge to single digits today and tomorrow, and will remain below or near freezing on Wednesday and Thursday.
Roto-Rooter suggests these steps to prevent pipes from freezing:
Disconnect outside water hoses.
Inspect outside faucets, and repair dripping or leaking faucets.
If your home has an interior shut-off valve leading to outside faucets, close them and drain water from the pipes.
Cover outside faucets with a faucet insulation kit available at home and garden stores.
Apply heat tape around exposed pipes.
Allow a trickle of hot and cold water to drip overnight in sinks and bathtubs that have supply pipes that run along outside walls.
Click on these links to learn more about how to avoid cracked water pipes during this cold snap.
The best way to not worry about your pipes freezing in the winter is to prepare for the disaster, and then hope that it doesn't happen, wrote PD reporter Roxanne Washington in 2012. "Frozen pipes can be a costly problem if precautions are not taken," says Mary Kennedy Thompson, president of Mr. Rooter Corp. "Oftentimes, homeowners find themselves unprepared when winter weather hits." Angie's List notes that a 1/8-inch crack in a pipe can spew up to 250 gallons of water in a day. But all it takes is a little bit of labor and a few supplies to skate through deep freezes without your home becoming a kiddie pool, Washington wrote.
In the United States, frozen pipes cause a huge amount of damage each year; unlike natural disasters, this disaster is largely preventable, according to State Farm. By taking a few simple precautions, you can help save yourself the mess, money, and aggravation frozen pipes cause.
Surprisingly, ice forming in a pipe does not typically cause a break where the ice blockage occurs, says the Weather Channel. It's not the radial expansion of ice against the wall of the pipe that causes the break. Rather, following a complete ice blockage in a pipe, continued freezing and expansion inside the pipe causes water pressure to increase downstream -- between the ice blockage and a closed faucet at the end. It's this increase in water pressure that leads to pipe failure.
With the temperatures likely dropping to the single digits to near zero Monday night, burst pipes are likely to be a significant problem across the area. The Washington Post talked to a plumber yesterday who recommended that now would be a good time to shut off the water to the outside of the home for those who haven't already — before the wicked cold begins to arrive starting mid-to-late Monday morning.
If a faucet or pipe inside your house freezes, you can thaw it using a good hair dryer, according to Allstate. (For safety purposes, avoid operating a hair dryer around standing water). To thaw a frozen pipe, heat water on the stove, soak towels in the hot water and wrap them around cold sections of the pipes. When thawing a pipe, start thawing it nearest to the faucet. Make sure the faucet is turned on so that melted water can drip out.