Frozen Pipe Preventative Measures

[Paul Bommarito]

As I am sure most people are aware, we just went through some of the coldest days in Chicago's history. Many people had pipes burst and as I walked out of Home Depot this morning, everyone had pipe insulation, new copper pipes, and a variety of other materials to help deal with the devastation that the cold can cause. We were not spared from this and had two pipes burst in our laundry room. I should have expected this given that there is no heating in that area. So below are some lessons I have learned, and would love to hear anyone else's tips/tricks and also thoughts on what we should do now that we have to replace a bunch of pipes. Should we switch to PEX or PVC over copper?

1. Insulate all the pipes that you can if you live in a cold area. Pipe insulation is not very expensive, and if it saves you from having a pipe burst, this could save you thousands in damages.

2. If you know really cold weather is coming, and you have areas of pipe that are more likely to freeze, consider turning off the water to that area before the cold comes, and emptying those pipes as best as possible. This is something we should have done, but did not know any better unfortunately. Had we done this early last week, there would have been no water in these pipes to freeze and burst.

3. Depending on the space in the home or property, consider adding baseboard electric heaters to the room to help keep it warmer in the winter. We were not aware of these, and now that we know you can buy them for $100 or less, we will be installing one or two in our unheated laundry room area and storage room, and have these keep the temperature warmer in the winter so the pipes stay running.

Would love to hear any other thoughts! (I read to leave your faucets dripping, and that did not help unfortunately. Maybe if I left it running a little stronger, but I did not like that idea too much...)

[Mark Ainley]

@Paul Bommarito great topic to write about.  Here are some thoughts and experiences from our management operation. 

1. We have about 350, 100 year old plus buildings in the Chicago which is where we have 80% of our issues so we focus more attention there in the days leading up to the cold snap. 

2. We focus on the buildings where the plumbing is in a crawl space or on an exterior wall.  

3. Some buildings we use gutter heaters (low voltage) to wrap problem areas. 

4. We request that tenants keep all interior doors open to keep heat flow thru the entire home or unit. 

5. When you get frozen pipes don’t rush to thaw them.  The faster you thaw them the more likely it will burst.  Thaw slow.  

6. Our vacant construction units or some vacant single family turnovers we will turn water off at main so we have no flow thru the pipes.  

7. We have the tenants open the sink base cabinet doors in kitchen and bath to keep warm air flowing under and into the cabinet.  

We have these snaps a few times a year and learning your weak spots in a building and fixing them for the next time is something we try to do. Learn from your problems to prevent.