From short days to dropping temperatures to icy roads, there are a lot of reasons winter is typically no one’s favorite season. And while preparing yourself for winter is as simple as taking scarves, hats and heavy coats out of storage, getting your home winter-ready is a bit more complex.
Winterizing your home can seem like an annoying and perhaps needless chore, but it can save your household budget in the long run. Burst pipes are a common – yet entirely preventable – problem during winter months, and it’s an expense nobody ever budgets for. Properly prepping your home will save you time, money and heartache – while protecting your property for decades to come.
Why Is Cold Weather Bad for Your Plumbing?
In the winter, plumbers get a lot of calls for emergency service due to bursting water pipes. Pipes with the highest risk of bursting are those located outside of building insulation, or those in unheated interior areas such as attics and crawl spaces.
When water freezes, its molecules expand. Inside your pipes, this leads to an immense amount of water pressure building between the ice blockage and the faucet, which eventually causes the pipe to rupture – and an unhappy homeowner to pick up the phone.
Prevent Winter Surprises With Video Sewer Inspection
Regular video inspections are vital to maintaining a healthy pipe network. These inspections are a valuable preventive measure that allows homeowners to closely monitor the condition of their sewer pipelines and work with their plumber to identify any areas in need of repair or replacement. Video camera inspections are a tried-and-true plumbing technique because they’re the best way to get the total picture of your pipes’ health.
During the inspection procedure, a trained plumbing technician will place a specially made closed-circuit TV camera inside your pipes, then remotely maneuver the camera throughout the inside of the sewer pipeline. The camera is small enough to fit around tight corners and access even the most difficult-to-reach areas of your sewer system.
At the end of the pipeline inspection, the plumber and homeowner can review the footage, and the plumber will point out any areas of concern. The plumber will also give you a copy of the video footage you can use for insurance purposes.
When making your home winterizing checklist, don’t forget about your plumbing. Video camera inspections are one of the simplest ways to detect any problems with your home’s pipes and fix them before a plumbing crisis rears its ugly head.
Get Ready For Winter With a Camera Pipe Inspection Service
Environmental Pipe Cleaning, Inc., employs the most cutting-edge sewer camera inspection available in Richmond, VA. We use both mini- and mainline cameras to perform pipeline inspections and we have all the equipment necessary to make every pipeline video inspection safe and successful.
Environmental Pipe Cleaning is a Class-A contractor and a certified woman-owned business, and has been serving residential and industrial customers in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Washington, D.C., for more than 20 years.