Cold Weather Tips for Tennessee Homeowners

Hey everyone! Unless you've been living underneath a rock you know that we're going to have some cold weather coming in tonight. I thought we would just take a minute or two to go over a couple of cold weather tips. A lot of you may know what to do with this cold weather but for some of you, this may be the first time as homeowners that you've been through this. Our particular house, you hear Herman he wants to help in the background.

Our particular house is built on a crawlspace. You know a lot of times you get air underneath it, things of that nature and cold air can be really bad for your pipes.

First of all we would recommend whenever you go to bed tonight leave your water dripping OK I say whenever you go to bed but really just whenever it gets cold. Now this is not going to run your water bill up. OK. This is this is not much.

The other thing we recommend, you don't have to look at the cabinets here, but keeping your cabinet doors open to let some of this warm air in.

Now I'm back up here. One of the important things that I learned the hard way is that not only do you want to leave the water dripping, I would do it in the kitchen and all the bathrooms but leave at least one of them dripping with the hot water on. You ask why the hot water? Let me show you. Here, come on into the garage.

Many of y'all have your water heater in the garage. We have that too. We've got our pipes wrapped up. However, we're right here at the cold door and that cold air can come right in here. One time we had, we were running our water inside, but the pipes froze coming from the water heater because we did not have the water heater turned on and that became a mess trying to get that fixed. So do not just leave your water dripping, leave a little bit of hot water running through these pipes which then will help keep them from freezing.

I'm sure you know this but another feature make sure your hose is disconnected. If you've got something to cover this with you certainly want to cover it. It will help. This is the biggest culprit right here of busted water pipes, leaving your water hose hooked up. So make sure to unhook that.

Then one other thing here. I said we are built on a crawl.space. You have crawlspace vents where the air can get in and out. We want to make sure that these are closed. Go all around your house make sure they're closed and that is going to help knock down some of that cold air that could be flowng underneath where your pipes are exposed. Here in Tennessee very few of our water pipes are actually wrapped just because we don't get this really cold weather. So hopefully we just saved you several hundred if not a few $1000 in repairs by doing that. If you have any questions let us know and stay warm.