With our second big blast of winter weather headed our way in the south, I thought this may be an appropo time to bring up winter water woes. Since we are in the south and dont typically get months on end of frozen weather, our houses and water systems dont have the protections against winter that places in the northern bits of the country do.
Winter time water issues cause many people too many headaches especially when you have a greenhouse and indoor gardens. Throw a few humans into the mix and a pile of critters and water issues can cause much grief. While water issues are a pain to deal there are things we can do to help weather frozen pipes and no water.While none of these are long term solutions, they can help make the lack of running water a more tolerable situation until the weather warms up and thaws things or it warms up enough to go off high alert status and back into normal living mode.
Believe it or not after just doing this a time or two and seeing how much stress is relieved, it becomes a habit and just a part of life. It is no longer the hassle it was even if it does freeze solid for a while as you have all your bases covered and it gives you the time to figure the trouble out and hopefully solve it.
So here are some of our winter water woe preventive measures and how we deal with it. What are some of yours?
When you hear of a cold spell coming your way, go get all the buckets you can muster up and begin filling them. Keep a couple empty as you will need them.
If you have a wood stove get a couple large pots on the stove to keep water hot at all times. This serves a few purposes. It works for carrying some to critters for thawing waterers and buckets. It gives you hot dish water and bathing water as well at all times. If you dont have a wood stove have pots to be able to heat sufficient water available.
Make sure all your bases are covered in heat tapes, pipe wrappings, heat lamps or heaters etc. Wind along with very cold temperatures will freeze lines quick as a wink even if a tiny couple inch area is all that is exposed.
Fill any and all extra jugs with drinking water. A gallon a day per person will suffice for drinking purposes.We like to keep a week on hand at all times even though we use the spring here on the property.
When the cold rolls in leave the faucets dripping at all times while temps remain below freezing throughout the day. Put a pan or dishpan, something there to catch the drips. These drips will keep you will a constant supply of fresh water to replenish what you will be using to keep plants and critters watered in the event you lose your water during the extreme cold spell.
More often than not hot water freezes before the cold. Water can be heated easily in most cases. Be sure to leave the cold dripping. Our pump doesnt run at all with it at a pretty steady drip. Our drip here provides us plenty of water for everything here so that if we lost all water we could go about a week before having to either solve the issue or go start dipping by hand from the cistern.
Because we have the critters and gardens to contend with we keep about 50 gallons on hand for them in buckets. If we had more buckets, I would increase that amount with out thinking twice. We keep the bucket water in the living room which we have closed off for the winter. The buckets do take up a fair bit of space but, it is better than figuring out where to come up with 50 gallons of water when you wake up after knowing a cold snap was coming to no water..
Disconnect hoses from hose bibs, drain and put away. If you have had to unscrew a frozen hose with ice in the line, you know why. This also gives you easier access to water if you use a hose for watering as the hose always freezes before the water spigot freezes.If you have a shut off valve for the hose bibbs it is also good to shut it off at the main line and drain it. This prevents water from freezing in the line itself and then bursting. We forgot this last month during our wintery blast and dealt with two weeks of no water after.
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