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What to Do if Your Pipes Freeze / Bust

This is a problem that we’ve heard many times over the past 2-3 days here in our hardware stores. This post is a little late, but we felt we really should address it online.

Let’s start with IF your pipes froze. By now, they’re probably NOT frozen and that could be a good or a bad thing, but if they are… or if you are reading this after the early January 2014 deep freeze that Atlanta and North Georgia received… what do you do now that they are frozen?

First of all, you need to keep the temperature up in your house. The un-insulated pipes need some warmth to thaw and keep from cracking. When the pipes do start to thaw, you need to make sure that your faucets are open. All that water needs to expand and clear out of the pipe.

Use heat tapes or hair dryer or other ways to bring up the temperature of the pipe and hopefully the water will thaw and move through your lines before any pipes bust.

You also need to become hyper critical with your observation skills. Time to closely examine all areas of your house, inside and out, for signs of leaking and cracked pipes. This is gonna require visual and audible observation. You need to look for wet spots and you need to listen for water dripping/running. If you have broken pipes, it is imperative that you shut off water to your house immediately.

Unless you’re really skilled with plumbing and are a DIY rockstar, you probably will need help. You may need to remove walls, dirt and even concrete to get to the ultimate problem, and then when you do get to the busted pipe, it could be copper, PVC, steel, flex line… it could be a fitting that is the problem… it could be soldered or glued or compressed. The great thing about living in 2014 is the smart phone. We’ve seen a lot of people bringing pictures of their plumbing woes. That helps us move quicker to solutions for our customers.

Not many people are coming in with issues related to their power equipment. Yet. I’ll say this. Moisture + Engines = Problems. Watch those plastic tubes where gasoline has separated and you actually have water in the line. If they bust, and thaw… you could have gas and other oil leaks.

 

 

 

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