Cold weather stressing home, sweet home

by Kathy Duff
Grand Island Dispatch, February 9, 2007

Gerry Soto of Erie Plumbing works on frozen pipes in the ceiling of the church nursery at Whitehaven Road Baptist Church. (photo by Joe Eberle)

Are the frigid temperatures putting undue stress on you? Your home’s infrastructure may be even more stressed than you are.

Take, for example, your furnace. Winter is the prime season for general furnace breakdowns, says AJ Beyer of AJ’s Heating & Air Conditioning on Grand Island. This past Tuesday, he and his staff were very busy with repair calls to residential furnaces.

“Your furnace is cycling more often in the cold weather,” explains Beyer, with a unit having to come on more frequently just to keep a home at its set temperature. So, it’s important to change or clean the furnace filter every three to four weeks, because dirt adds to the unit’s workload. A professional cleaning and “check-up,” at any time in the heating season, but especially in the fall, can help avoid an emergency call on a sub-zero night.

Stressed, too, is plumbing. Pipes can freeze as the result of a broken furnace, but also ice can form in pipes in any uninsulated part of your home, in pipes located close to an outside wall, in attics and basements and in those supply lines to the backyard swimming pool. Ice in pipes expands, often causing fractures and water damage to the surrounding space.

Earlier this week, Gerry Soto of Erie Plumbing on Fix Road sent workers to the Whitehaven Road Baptist Church to deal with frozen pipes in the ceiling of the church nursery. This situation caused some concern for the Mothers of Preschoolers ministry, which would be needing the nursery space for infants and toddlers later in the week. The plumbers remedied the situation by applying heat to the affected pipes so that they would not burst.

What steps can the homeowner take to guard against this winter woe? Plumbers recommend wrapping at-risk pipes with insulation, available at any hardware or home store. Running a slow trickle of water from outdoor hose bibs or basement faucets can also prevent a serious problem. And a special note to Grand Island “snowbirds” and energy cost-conscious homeowners: Set your furnace thermostat at no lower than 55 degrees. This preventive measure will go a long way toward functioning plumbing and less wintertime stress.