From Truckee Meadows Water Authority:
With temperatures hovering around freezing this week, you can avoid the expense and trouble of frozen water pipes around your home with a few simple tips. “Our crews have been busy helping customers whose pipes have burst because of the cold weather,” said Andy Gebhardt, manager of customer service at Truckee Meadows Water Authority (TMWA). “Once your pipes have burst, water damage is almost a certainty.”
The staff at TMWA has compiled these simple winterization precautions for you to follow to avoid frozen pipes:
• Insulate pipes or faucets in unheated areas. If you have water pipes in an unheated garage or crawl space under the house, wrap them with heat tape. Hardware and home improvement stores offer appropriate pipe-wrapping tape.
• Close the foundation or exterior vents around your house to help keep cold air out of crawl spaces.
• Seal off access doors, air vents and cracks. Repair broken basement windows. Cold-winter winds whistling through overlooked openings can quickly freeze exposed water pipes. Keep garage doors closed if there are water lines in the garage. However, avoid plugging air vents that your furnace, dryer or water heater needs for safe ventilation.
• During periods of hard freezes, or when you’re away from your home for an extended period of time, keep your home thermostat at a temperature that will keep your pipes from freezing, no lower than 55ºF.
• Know the location of your master water shutoff valve. In many homes it's where the water line comes into your house from the street. If a pipe bursts anywhere in the house -- kitchen, bath, basement or crawl space -- this valve turns off all water and will save your home from water damage. So, find it now and paint it a bright color or hang a tag on it. Be sure everyone in the family knows where it is.
For the how-to video and other information on winterizing your home, visit: http://tmwa.com/conservation/winterize
From Truckee Meadows Water Authority
