Winter Water Line Maintenance

Gravel Grading and Excavating is here for your frozen pipe emergencies… But we would rather meet under better circumstances, like:
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• Excavating a pond for summer fun
• Clearing land for a new home build
• Contributing to community projects

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As the ground around our water pipes freezes and thaws, it grows and expands. Pipes can heave and break from the movement which makes for a big mess and limited access to your family’s most important resource: Water.

Frozen Pipe PRevention

Let’s prevent that headache if we can. First, make a list of everything in your home and yard that uses water and needs maintenance. There’s more than just the obvious. Does water run to your dryer for a steam cycle? Do you have outdoor faucets? Keep these appliances in good working order.

Consider outdoor water sources. Any outdoor hoses out of use for the winter should be disconnected and drained. Make sure the water supplying those hoses is turned off at the source: Something we can forget with hose attachments. 

Keep garage doors closed to retain heat to your home. Pipes on the inside walls of your home are not insulated well enough to withstand outdoor winter temperatures. Don’t inadvertently turn an inside wall into an outside one with a wide open garage door.

If you do have pipes in unheated areas, like basements, garages, or outbuildings, do what you can to get them insulated.

Frozen Pipe PRevention in Extreme Cold

Those are all preventative measures you can take right now, but there is more to do in extreme cold.

Our Iowa homes are tough, but we do enough work to know that frozen pipes still happen on the coldest nights.
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• Run a tap in your home at a slow drip overnight to keep water lines running.
• If you have a faucet on an outer wall of your home, open any cabinets to invite heat from the home to warm the pipes.
• Keep your furnace at a steady temperature or maybe turn it up a few notches.

​We wish you a Merry Christmas and happy new year, and hope to not visit until warmer weather returns. Hopefully we’ll see you in the spring with exciting build projects instead of troublesome repairs.