Winter is coming! No, we are not talking about the white walkers, but rather our unpredictable, brutal Maryland winters. To prepare your home for the season, we have put together this quick guide to winterizing your home.
With some preparation and a plan in place, you can endure this winter season feeling better than you did after watching the finale of Game of Thrones.
Winterizing your home’s plumbing and heating system is a crucial process that prepares your home for inevitable winter weather. With freezing temperatures and snowfall, your home is much more susceptible to damage.
Water Heaters
With freezing temperatures and the ground temperature plummeting, the water entering your home becomes colder. This means that your water heater needs to work harder than usual. This is also the time of year when we Marylanders want to pump more hot water into our sinks, tubs, and showers to stay warm. With this increased activity, underlying issues can emerge. Faulty parts, sediment build up, or a bad winter storm can wreak havoc on your home’s water heater.
If you have a gas water heater, it’s important to keep an eye on the pilot, thermocouple, and pilot control valve. In electric water heaters, it’s important to inspect the thermostat and heating elements. A licensed Warrior plumber will be able to assess these parts for faults and ensure they are working properly.
Sediment and other minerals tend to build up on the bottom of water heaters. This causes your water heater to utilize more energy and lose efficiency over time. Your home’s water heater should be flushed out regularly to avoid build up and prevent damage.
Sump Pumps
Maryland winters can beat up our homes with rain, ice, and snow. Flooding can become quite a problem during the winter, especially in the more vulnerable areas of your home like basements and crawlspaces. A sump pump is only activated when it is needed and is meant to pump water out of these vulnerable areas, away from your home, to avoid flooding.
Just like any other system in your home, your sump pump can develop faults. Unlike these other systems, though, it is often not obvious that your sump pump isn’t working properly until it is too late. Preventative sump pump maintenance allows your trusted, licensed, Warrior plumber to identify any issues before they cause any costly damage to your home. Your sump pump should be inspected regularly to ensure it works properly when it’s needed most.
Boilers
Boilers are like the motor of your home. They not only protect your family from the winter elements, they are needed to keep everything within your house at a temperature that it can function properly. But like anything, boilers can fail at the most inopportune moments due to faulty parts, pumps, or electrical components. Just like your vehicle, boilers should be serviced on an annual basis to ensure they are working at optimum efficiency and properly heating your home.
Outside Pipes and Faucets
It is imperative to winterize your home’s outdoor faucets, pipes, and plumbing well before the first freeze. Ice can form in water supply pipes within your homes walls that lead to exposed outdoor faucets, once temperatures drop below 30 degrees. Water damage from frozen pipes and extend far into the home causing costly, sometimes even catastrophic damage. (add photo of burst pipe damage)
A Warrior plumber can ensure that all of your outside faucets are drained of water, disconnected, turned off, and insulated to protect your pipes and faucets from unnecessary damage.
This winter, Warrior Plumbing and Heating has bundled up our most popular (and most crucial) cold weather services to save you hundreds of dollars in preparing your home for the winter season. We are offering water heater* inspections, sump pump inspections, boiler* services, AND outdoor faucet winterizing for a bundled up low price of just $300. Typically, these services cost upwards of $500 – $600.
Keep in mind, this offer ends January 1st. Call 443-967-3736 to bundle up and save when winterizing your home this year.
*Bundle excludes high-efficiency water heaters & boilers. We’d be happy to give you a fair price on a high-efficiency bundle Please give us a call.
