Any Cleveland resident who has been through their share of winters has probably run into a frozen pipe situation. When your pipes freeze, your home is stranded without plumbing and access to water and badly frozen pipes have a high likelihood of bursting which can cause flooding, water damage and mold/mildew growth. Repairing frozen pipes can be costly, so it’s always a good move to ‘winter-proof’ them first. Taking preventative steps can step frozen pipes from eventually bursting and causing permanent damage to your home. One cheap and fast fix that can help if you only have a partial freeze is simply using your pipes often enough so that they don’t get the chance to totally freeze up. This simply entails letting water run through your pipes, even if it’s just at a slow trickle. This is often enough to prevent a full freeze and thaw out ice accumulation.
Now, if one of your pipes does become fully frozen, the best way to fix it is to expose as much of the pipe as you can. This can mean opening kitchen cupboards or a bathroom vanity and exposing those pipes to the warmer air circulating inside the house. In many cases, if the freeze isn’t too bad, the house’s normal warmth may be enough to return the pipes to working order. But for more serious freezes, you may need to enlist the help of a portable space heater or even a
There are also some specialized tools available that may also be used to fight frozen pipes. One such option is a wraps that goes around the pipe itself and provides adequate insulation or indirect heat to the pipe so that it doesn’t succumb to freezing. Pompeii’s technicians are equipped with a heated wire or cable that can be inserted into pipes to directly apply heat to the accumulated ice inside.
For deeper, more severe freezes, we may need to remove sections of the pipe, especially the traps, to gain access further into your plumbing. We always start these procedures at the drain area because a build-up of water or steam trapped between chunks of ice can cause pipes to burst.
Frozen pipes are one of the harsh realities of winter. Let Pompeii’s Plumbing and Heating handle all your frozen pipe problems this winter!
