SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pipes, frozen pipes, plant, cover, flowers, faucets, ground, exposed, home, paint, plumbing, freezing, turn, bloom, water, thaw, auburn,
00:02
Before you start your next do it yourself project listen to this. You Got This! is on the air. You Got This! is hosted by ABT plumbing electric heat and air owner Andrew Twidwell and Rosalie Brown, with a helpful hand. Here are Andrew and Rosalie.
00:18
This is Rosalie I’m hosting this week’s episode, You Got This! the show of DIY do’s and don’ts. I’m going solo this week. As with every week, You Got This! is brought to you by ABT plumbing, electric heat and air. We have locations in Grass Valley and Auburn. Last summer we purchased Jeffco, plumbing and Auburn. So we now have two physical locations to serve you. But we are always available for service calls in all of Nevada County and Placer. County as well. And parts of the Sacramento region. If you find yourself needing any plumbing, electric heat and air needs, you can give us a call at 530-230-9092.
This week, I am flying solo because Andrew is traveling. So I thought that with the full spring that we’ve been in, where it gets nice and warm, and we’re enjoying the weather. And then suddenly we get a you know, freezing cold patch might be a good idea to talk a little bit about pipes, and how we can actually prevent, if possible, are pipes freezing, what to do if the pipes do freeze, and then some other cool information on if you have some exterior pipes that you’d like to hide, or make less visible from the street. So since I don’t have anyone to ask me, I’m just gonna say it June great. If this one person monologue for the next 22 minutes is going to drive you crazy, you might want to catch us next week, because it’s just me. So let’s talk a little bit about where I got the information. While I do have a little bit of a background in construction from childhood. Dad was a contractor, I do source most of my information from other people. So in this case, talking about preventing our pipes from freezing, I kind of went through the internet and found something on a box retailer site. I’m not going to mention the retailer, but you have probably visited the store in Auburn, and it does have a big orange and white logo. So let’s jump in. So as winter rolls in, or sticks around or keeps coming back, it’s going to be vital that you know how to prevent your pipes from freezing. when water freezes in your pipes, whether it’s due to quick drops in the outside temperatures, or poor insulation, or even a thermostat that set too low, it’s volume expands and puts pressure on the pipes from inside. This can of course cause a burst pipe. But even a small crack or two can be the start of some devastating and very expensive water and plumbing damage. We do want to prevent that, if possible, right. So we’re going to talk a little bit about how to keep the pipes from freezing what to do if you do have frozen pipes, and then what you can do to prevent it in the future. So I guess that’s kind of I’m duplicating what I’m talking about, but I’m by myself so we’re flying solo. So here’s a number of steps you can take. So what you want to do, if possible is insulate your pipes that are located in the attic and crawlspace using pipe insulation. And even if the climate where you live and I’m assuming most of you are in Nevada County doesn’t have hard freeze conditions very often. You can still wrap your pipes in heat tape, or even heat cables with a thermal thermostat control. The best pipe insulation for your situation is going to depend on your home. When it was built materials available, what you can source, you’re always gonna want to of course, refer to the manufacturer’s directions. You’re going to also seal or caulk any cracks that might lead in cold air, especially places where pipes run from inside outside the home, such as your dryer vents or your water pipes.
04:28
You want to look at preventing these frozen pipes in the outdoors as well. So as you’re winterizing your home, which because we’re already in February, most of you have already done you’re going to disconnect your garden hoses. For outdoor faucets with cut off valves, you’re gonna make sure they’re closed and the faucets are drained. You can also protect them by using fossil covers throughout the winter months. So the cold weather settles in and you notice temperatures beginning to drop like we are going to have a big drop this week. or we just had depending on when you listen to the show, start a small drip of both hot water and cold water in the kitchen, bath laundry areas, and any other faucets. And now, a small water drip is all that’s needed to keep water moving through the system and can prevent frozen pipes. Now, if you’re going to be away for a couple of days, you want to let your neighbor know, maybe even ask them to check to make sure that the measures you’ve taken to prevent frozen pipes are working and nothing’s ruptured. Always good to have a nice neighborly relationship. Not all of us are blessed with that. I won’t tell you the stories I’ve had about crazy neighbors, because that could be a show on itself. So anyway, um, so you want to turn on it. Okay, so if you suspect that you have frozen pipes, turn on the faucet. If there’s only a drip or trickle of water, you may have frozen pipes. Check along the water supply lines taking note of very cold spots, inspect carefully to see if you notice any line breaks. If you find any broken pipes, you’re going to turn off the main water supply to the house. And then of course at that point, you’re going to want to call a professional so that we can get on it. Of course, I’m going to recommend you call abt at 530-230-9092. Okay, now, if you’re talking about fine your frozen pipes, you want to do this quickly and safely. There’s a few ideas on how you can thaw exposed an enclosed pipes burst, you’re going to open up the faucet for the affected pipe, the flowing water is going to help the ice melt even faster. For exposed pipes, especially surrounding especially excuse me, surrounding the pipe with a heat source is going to melt the ice inside. Now when we think of frozen pipes, usually my experience in Nevada County anyway has been that turning the water on and kind of allowing that to you know go for like half an hour or so usually in my experience has always fixed my issue. But if you have a severe issue and you’ve got ice on the inside of the pipe, you can wrap the pipe in a heating pad and turn the temperature dial up to Hi. Before I go any further, I just want to say these are suggestions. And I’m going to put the disclaimer that use your best judgment when it comes to flames or anything electrical. They do say you can aim a hairdryer on high and turn on the high volume at the pipe. And this is going to keep the air moving you’re gonna want to keep the air moving back and forth and around the pipe from about 12 to 16 inches at a time. You can also encircle the pipe and heated damp and towels change these rats frequently as they will lose heat to the pipe. This one I’m not sure about I’m gonna mention it. But I’m not a big fan of space heaters because I think they have a safety issue all on their own. But you can position a space heater to circulate warm air around a section of the pipe. You want to move the heat source to different sections as needed. And continue until the pipes are thawed and the water pressure returns to normal. For enclosed pipes, either in a wall or an area that’s hard to reach, you can try to turn up the heat in your home. The higher temperatures should help thaw out any pipes located inside walls. That’ll take a while but as we know your heater is heating the items in your home. So this I think is extreme and I wouldn’t recommend it. But they’re saying if it’s needed, cut out a section of the wall to gain access to the pipe. Let’s hope you don’t have to go that far. And then you can use any of the previously mentioned methods to deal with the exposed pipes. Again, just like you know net obviously never use extreme heat or open flames like a heat gun or a blowtorch to thaw pipe that’s going to present a fire hazard and can cause serious damage to your pipe. So we’ve covered this topic quite a few times. But if you know a hard freeze is coming or we’re going to have extreme weather, obviously the first thing we’re going to focus on is your exposed pipes outside.
09:19
And on the topic of exposed pipes. I found really cool information on I haven’t seen this a lot in California, but in colder climates and older communities I guess you might see you might have a home or situation where you have exterior plumbing pipes. Here’s a little fun facts. In 1829 Boston’s tree Mont hotel was the first structure to have indoor plumbing in the US. Many rural areas didn’t reap the benefits of indoor plumbing until the 1930s. And that’s not even 100 years ago. So That’s kind of funny thing about indoor plumbing obviously has come a long way since 1820s, and even the 1930s and there’s still some things that can make us cringe like exposed outdoor pipes. A lot of people will tell you these are eyesore. I find them interesting, but I’m kind of weird like that. If you do have door exposed pipes, the belief of course is that that’s going to detract from your home’s curb appeal. So what can you do to kind of offer some? What’s the word camouflage? So the experts not me, the experts. They suggest one of the things you could do is you could use plants. One of the most popular ways to disguise exposed exterior pipes is to use plants. You can use ever ground excuse me evergreen ground cover for low lying horizontal are short, short vertical pipes. The ground cover only is going to grow a few inches tall. So they also say news the feathered pink dantas plants sounds lovely, or the stone or pine. Another option is decorative grass. You can plant these on each side of the pipe, just make sure that you aren’t blocking any access ports with the plant space. While it might be tempting to plant a massive shrub next exposed pipes, it’s not a good idea. Anyone who’s ever had to have their sewer you know snaked knows that we don’t want to deal with big roots next to our plumbing systems. So you don’t want to have your big shrub eventually break the pipe that works for expose and also underground pipes. Better option is stick with plans to have much shallower root systems and this is going to show the roots don’t interfere with the pipe itself. Crafty folks, people who are good at DIY can use a wooden box wooden box would be a great option for pipes that are grouped together. You could choose either a horizontal or vertical box based on your needs, design style, et cetera, et cetera. What’s great as you can build the box yourself and paint any color you choose. And that would be one of the more affordable ways to hide your pipes. Seems obvious, right? Other things you can do, of course, these decorative objects that you might find in your yard or outside your home anyway, so you could use a birdbath fountain, or other hardscape features that you might be using to decorate your yard anyway. Some of the most common decorative objects include columns holding gazing balls, planters with the beautiful shrub of flowers and trellises. This disguise is said to work the best the pipe is visible from a single direction. If you can take if you can see it from several angles, a different method is probably going to be more your thing. You could also do something very cost effective and that will be paint the pipe. While you can’t make plumbing pipes magically disappear, you can’t come camouflage them, you’re gonna simply paint the visible part of the pipe to match what’s nearby. And in this case, I would assume it will be your house. So if your pipe is near the grass, bushes or other greenery, you could paint it the same shade of green. If the pipe is near mulch or a flower bed, consider painting at Brown or the color of the multi use. There’s nothing near the pipe paint payments in colors your house. Why not. To ensure that the paint properly adheres you’re going to want to use a spray paint that’s designed for the pipe specific material that I say that right specific material. For example, there are paints that can be specifically used for plastic or for metal. So it could also cover the pipe. Well exposed. Exterior pipes are unpleasant, you aren’t the first one to deal with them. There are products designed to cover them. For example, suggesting you can buy a fake tree trunk or a fake rock. We’ve all seen those. These come in a wide array of colors and styles you’ll find something that matches or complements your landscape design.
14:17
There are even covers with holes on the side to let water move through. This is ideal if you cover a drainage pipe. Others are completely hollow with solid sides to cover vertical pipes. Now another option here is you could industrialize the pipe if you don’t like any of these ways to disguise or hide your exterior pipes. And again, I don’t know that many of you have exterior pipes but why not just embrace them. You can celebrate their urban persona or industrial loft, traditional metal pipes, steel, aluminum, copper, iron, or national points of a hippie cosmopolitan cosmopolitan design. Who knew? But if you’re exposed pipes or PVC He put in a bit of work, add a few coats of matte black or even metallic paint. Doing so will instantly give the pipe a look at CIC urban decor. That’s what the experts are saying. I actually think that the urban look is kind of cool. But of course it depends on your, the setup of your house, the design of your house, you don’t want to make anything that actually stands out makes it worse, right. And since we are talking right now about outdoors, let’s go to another topic about your yard. Perhaps I did want to talk a little bit about this is probably a little early in the season to be thinking about. But if we live in California, everyone listening to this, I’m assuming, does, right? We know that California water restrictions have really made it you know, it can be really difficult to know what to plant we’ve got droughts kind of always, we’re always on the cusp of the drought. So because we know that our what’s the right word. Our ground cover is always going to be we want to go with with ground cover, there’s a few water but it grows well in our environment, all that good stuff. We’re gonna talk about that for a quick minute. According to the EPA, homeowners use between 30 to 70% of their watering for outdoors, okay. And so, with the climate that we’re in, it makes sense to get drought resistance, ground cover, so we’re going to talk about, like 10 I think these are 10 of the most drop, drought tolerant ground covers. And the first one is called Lynn Tina. This is a common ground cover. It’s easy to find a garden centers and home improvement stores requires very little care. It thrives in the sun, and it’s drought tolerant once it’s established. There are dozens of varieties that it’s a flowering perennial, and you can get it in white, yellow, orange, red, pink or blue. Aside from choosing the right color for harmony with your other plants, it’s important to know that when you’re buying lantana there are ground cover cultivars. That’s a new word for me. And shrub cultivars that can grow to more than six feet high. You want to make sure you’re purchasing of varieties for ground cover. It’s great for filling in bare spots that will spread easily to provide beautiful colorful ground cover in your yard. It also attracts butterflies and bees so planting lantana can also help other plants in your garden thrive. It’s drought resistant ground cover is incredibly popular in Southern California and central California. But that again has to do with the amount of sun that we’re we tend to get in central and southern California. Another great plant for the drought season or two to grow in drought resistant California is silver carpet. It’s also known as cerastium, chickweed and snow in summer. It’s a flowering perennial that does well in full sun. It’s a popular choice for rock gardens and it has small flowers. Silver carpet usually blooms in late spring and early summer. But the silver gray leaves provide an attractive low water ground cover all year. Once it’s established, it will require
18:46
your extra irrigation during times of extreme drought. Otherwise, it’s you know, holds up fairly well. It’s not known to be native to California, but it is native in in hot dry climates in the coastal plains. And so it does really well here it is considered spreads, it spreads slowly, okay, but you can pick up the pace of it by providing extra water early on to help it get established, encourage it to spread. And then once it’s established, you can back off and water it much less. Another one that is going to do well in dry conditions is called Spanish Daisy because about eight inches in height and it’s a flowering fast growing perennial. That’s a great choice for use as ground cover and borders, rock gardens, rock walls and around pathways. It’s native to Mexico, and it thrives in warmer parts of California. This one does require a bit more work when it comes to cleaning up your flowerbeds as the lower foliage dies off. But for those who love to look at the flowers, it’s worth the extra effort again, it’s called Spanish Daisy. Also known as Santa Barbara daisies. It’s true Daisy but it flowers Okay, excuse me. It’s not a true Daisy but it looks enough like a daisy that it’s going to pretty up your flowerbeds and ground cover. Another excellent ground cover is called Gaia, Xenia Zinnias are native to the southern part of, well again, southern part of the state. So sorry, I am recording this in the southern part of the state, so I apologize, but these are sometimes called Treasure flowers or African daisies. Okay, they have larger blooms. And this is going to bloom through summer and into fall. Flowers come in yellow, orange, yellow and orange whitening, yellow, white and purple, red and pink. They grow in low mounds with large flowers. So it’s a very popular choice for borders and flower beds, and your gazini amounts will grow up to about 18 inches. So you can increase the plants by propagating through cuttings. It’s going to offer you a lot of color without having to do a lot of watering. Another one that you may have heard of that does well is called creeping rosemary. It’s also known as prostrate rosemary. That just sounds awful. This fast growing evergreen does well in full sun, and it’s beautiful choice for cascading over rock walls or if you want to use it in a rock garden. It’s a drought tolerant ground cover. And it can also be used for culinary culinary purposes. Creeping Rosemary usually flowers during summer and the purple flowers usually stay through the beginning of fall. When it’s not in bloom. The foliage provides an attractive durable ground cover. As an added bonus creeping Rosemary attracts pollinators. And that’s going to benefit the rest of your garden as well. And I think I’ve time for one more before we turn it back to plumbing electric keep there. This one is not my favorite. In fact, I think it’s an ugly plant. But it does grow well in drought resistant areas, ice plants. It’s a low water ground cover that Californians are accustomed to seeing all along the coast. It’s also you know, grows near beaches. But honestly this thing can thrive in full sun or near the ocean. And depending on the variety you choose your ice plant may bloom and whites yellow, pink or purple. And it’s usually in bloom through summer and fall. It’s a succulent, so too much water is actually bad for it. And I’ll do well for you and poor soil, but not real damp soil. So dry climates, actually are great places to plant ice plant. Okay, so this was just a little bit of DIY, I apologize that it’s so low this week. But next week, we’ll have Andrew Twidwell back in the studio. And just a quick note that abt is hiring. We’re hiring in all departments. So if you have an interest in changing careers or changing companies, go ahead and send an email to hiring at easy as abc.com that’s hiring at easy cbt.com If you find yourself in need of any plumbing, electric, or heating and air services, give abt a call at 530-230-9092. You can find us on the web at easy as abc.com or on Facebook. And I appreciate you holding in this week and we’ll be back. We’ll be back next week with another new episode of You got this. Until then. Stay safe.
23:27
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Rosalie. Now let’s get that project started. You got this we’ll be back next Friday morning at nine o’clock on KNCO.