Oct10
5 Winter Plumbing Tips for Vacation Homes in Kelowna
Reading Time: 3 minutesHow to Properly Winterize Your Kelowna Home
Kelowna is a gorgeous city with incredible mountain views and tons of recreation opportunities, making it the perfect place to buy a summer vacation home. However, with nighttime winter temperatures in Kelowna dropping down to minus 20° Celsius at times, it’s so important to protect your investment when not in use by properly winterizing the plumbing system in your new vacation home. Not sure where to start? Don’t worry. Just keep reading to find out everything you need to know about winter plumbing in Kelowna.
Why Your Plumbing System Needs Winterizing
In a city like Kelowna, where temperatures frequently drop down below freezing overnight, it’s so important to properly winterize your vacation home to prevent your pipes from freezing and avoid any major plumbing issues while your house isn’t being used.
For instance, if a major issue involving your plumbing system (like your pipes bursting due to freezing temperatures) occurs while you aren’t around, it can cause severe damage to your home that can be incredibly costly to fix.
How To Properly Winterize Your Home’s Plumbing System
The best way to avoid plumbing issues throughout the winter is to properly winterize your vacation home along with its plumbing system. Below, we’ve provided some key steps to complete in this process that will help ensure your property is safe and sound until you are ready to use it again come summer.
Do an Inspection
At the end of every summer season, walk through your vacation home and examine all plumbing components, including toilets, drains, showerheads, and more.
Look for signs of leaks, clogs, and other issues that could worsen over the winter months and call in a plumber to have these issues resolved before you close up your home for the winter.
Throughout the winter season, it’s also important to continue to arrange for regular inspections to make sure that all is well at the property and that no plumbing issues have occurred. If you are unable to visit the home, hire someone or ask a friend or family member to check in on the property periodically, particularly after any big weather events.
Insulate Exposed Pipes
It’s crucial that you insulate any exposed pipes within the home (mainly in unheated areas like basements, attics, and crawl spaces), as this helps them retain heat and prevents the pipes from freezing and bursting during the winter months. These pipes can be insulated using pipe insulation sleeves or heat tape; however, we strongly recommend calling a plumber to complete the insulation work.
Set Your Thermostat to Prevent Freezing
In order to prevent your pipes from freezing due to cold temperatures in the home, keep your thermostat set to at least 15° Celsius. This will help ensure your home never gets too cold and prevent mould and mildew growth.
Turn Off and Drain Your Water
Turning off your water during the winter time when your home isn’t in use is a no-brainer; however, what you may not know is that you’ll also need to go around the home and drain all of the water from your plumbing fixtures. Fortunately, this is a pretty simple task. Here’s how you do it.
After you turn off the main water supply:
- Turn on every shower, sink, or faucet in the home and wait until the water is no longer flowing out from the fixtures before turning them off.
- Do the same with your outdoor hoses and sprinklers
- Drain all the water from your washing machine and dishwasher
- Flush every toilet in the house several times to ensure that the bowl and tank have been completely emptied
Call a Plumber
Before you close up your vacation home for the winter season, we always recommend having a local plumber come by to take a look at things, make sure the house is properly winterized, and check to see if there are any plumbing issues that need resolving.
At My Plumber Kelowna, we have a team of licensed, trained, and highly experienced plumbers who can help you winterize your home and diagnose, troubleshoot, and resolve any plumbing issues you may be experiencing.
Call us today at 250-601-0000 or fill out a form on our website, and we will be in touch ASAP.