When the weather starts to cool down, it’s time to start preparing your home for winter. An important and often overlooked task is draining and disconnecting your hoses and winterizing your outdoor faucets, also known as hose bibs. Properly maintaining your exterior faucets can prevent them from freezing. Frozen water expands insides of pipes, and that expansion increases the risk of cracks that could potentially burst and leak inside your home.
Choose a mild day before the first hard freeze to complete the following steps. If your home has several outdoor faucets, check each one individually because they may be connected to different shutoff valves.
When warmer weather returns, inspect the faucet and hose before reconnecting them. Slowly reopen the interior shutoff valve, then check the indoor and outdoor connections for leaks while the water begins flowing. Replace damaged washers, hoses, or fittings before regular use, and avoid leaving a hose connected when freezing weather is still possible.
Before freezing temperatures arrive, take a few minutes to prepare your exterior faucets and hoses. Completing this simple maintenance before the first hard freeze can help protect your home from costly water damage.