Do you need to winterize your home? Many disasters caused by winter weather conditions — like those that have occurred from the unprecedented winter storm in Texas — can be prevented by knowing how to winterize a house. Although it’s hard to think about such…
It doesn’t happen often, but at one time or another, you might need to shut down your plumbing system. In other words, how do you properly put all of the water-using fixtures, appliances, faucets, and pipes in your home out of operation during a major…
Every winter, about 250,000 families — most of which don’t know how to prevent freezing pipes — wake up to find a kitchen, bath, or basement flooded with water from a pipe burst. And it’s no joke. Other than a fire or a natural disaster, very…
I was talking about having to repair a sillcock the other day, and the customer asked, “What the heck is a sillcock?” Good question. Clearly, I was using a word more commonly used by plumbers than homeowners. Here’s the good news: a sillcock is nothing…
When you winterize outdoor water faucets (also called hose spigots or hose bibs) around your home, especially with a frost-free faucet, you are avoiding major headaches and expensive repair bills with one very affordable update. As the freezing cold begins creeping in around this time…
A frost-proof faucet on the exterior of your home (technically called a sillcock, it’s also known as a frost-free or freeze-proof faucet) is similar to a common outdoor faucet. What’s the difference? The outdoor frost-proof faucet has an extra-long stem (or pipe) reaching back about…
