Unfreezing your pipes may sound crazy if you live in a place where this problem doesn\’t occur as much as it occurs to people living in areas where it is as cold as it can be or in areas where there are heavy snowfall. Heavy snowfall or abundance of ice might be gentle for the weather but it does end up causing a few problems to our household. One of the problems is frozen pipe.
Frozen pipes are situations where your house is not getting in any water due to the fact that its pipes are frozen due to the cold. When it comes to the winter season, frozen pipes are the problem that is common to happen. It can be painful and cost you a lot when you have to have someone to unfreeze frozen pipes for you. However, you can prevent all of that by doing it yourself. Most of the frozen pipes problem can be solved. It is easy and takes a short time to learn. Here are the methods on how to unfreeze frozen plastic and metal pipes.
Things that you need:
- Hair dryer
- hot water
- towel
- torch
Step:
- First, check for any cracks on the pipe before thawing it or it might cause you trouble later on. If there exists any crack, turn the water off first and concentrate on repairing it. After you are done then move on to the next step.
- If you want to unfreeze a plastic pipe, put a towel over it and pour hot boiling water over it. You can do the same thing for metal pipes.
- The other way to unfreeze pipes is to open the closest faucet. Thaw the metal pipe using either hair dryer or torch.
- Start thawing from backward from the faucet. Avoid letting the pipe get too hot to touch.
- Let the faucet drip during below 32 degrees F weather to prevent pipes from freezing. Although it does still freeze, it may keep the pipe from bursting.
- You can wrap the pipe with remodeled sleeves of foam. The sleeves come in every size. Close an adjustable wrench over the pipe and measure the distance between the jaws to find out what size you exactly need.
- Then, secure the foam with duct tape every 10 inches and at all joints.
By now, your frozen pipes might feel loose and light thus showing that they are not frozen anymore and that water can now flow freely in your place.
Additional Reading:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5651014_unfreeze-pipes.html
Image Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bracken/89555492/
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