I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season and the New Year is off to a great start.
Our water division was crazy busy a couple weeks ago when the temperature dropped to 15 degrees. Now till Tuesday, we are expecting below 30 degree temperatures and then a warm up. That is a recipe for pipes to start bursting. So here are some of my thoughts on how you can keep this from happening to your apartments or commercial buildings.
- Saving money by turning your heat down in the winter is just not a good idea. I wish I could say turn your heat down to X degree to avoid a pipe freezing, but it depends on where you live, where your pipes are and how well insulated those pipes are. Pipes in a bathroom, kitchen, attic and crawlspace are normally NOT insulated.
- Click on this website below to see the probability of frozen pipes in our region (insert laugh here). https://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/pdfs/shw_freezemap.pdf
- Heat should be kept at 65 degrees and consider leaving the taps dripping when it gets to really cold temperatures.
- Sending a reminder email or posting a notice to your residents or tenants might be a good idea.
- Lastly, please use this email to think about where your thermostats are set in this cold weather.
And if all of the above fails, remember we are here to clean up the resulting water damage!
