Your Essential Autumn Plumbing Checklist
Your Essential Autumn Plumbing Checklist
I love Autumn, It’s a season of change. The weather is getting cooler, the leaves are changing colour, and it’s time to start preparing your home for the winter months ahead. It’s a time for cosying up your home ready for the impending hibernation of those rainy winter nights and frosty weekends.
In Autumn, my daughter and I like to create hygge areas around our home with fluffy blankets, cushions and candles. Hygge (pronounced hoo-guh) is a Danish term for ‘comfort and joy’; although when we sing the Frozen – The Musical song about hygge my husband and son strangely experience NO comfort OR joy…
One of the most important things you can do to ensure your home is ready for the colder weather (apart from creating cuuuute and cosy indoor zones) is to check your plumbing. Not as fun, not as musical, but perhaps more important?
We’ve created a top five checklist for prepping your plumbing for Autumnal weather.
1 – Check The Flexi hoses In Your Home
While this isn’t a strictly weather dependent chore, any reminder is timely to check these little babies. Flexi hoses are stainless-steel braided hoses that encase rubber pipes. They are extremely common and found in almost all suburban homes across West Melbourne. Flexi hoses will be installed beneath your kitchen sink, under your laundry sink, connecting your dishwasher, your fridge water supply, under your zip tap/water filter unit and connecting your toilet cistern.
Flexi hoses reduce the stress on pipes by withstanding vibration, contraction and expansion and are bendable and adaptable to areas. They are also cheap and simple for plumbers to use, reducing labour costs when installing plumbing fixtures.
They do, however, have a reputation as a nuisance plumbing fitting and are blamed for up to 22% of flooded homes in Australia. We replaced a record amount of flexi hoses in Altona Meadows just last year! If you notice one of your flexi hoses is frayed, rusted or stretched too tight (have a look at some photos here) please get in touch so we can replace them for you.
2 – Clean Your Gutters And Downpipes
Beautiful orange and brown leaves are as autumnal as Neil Young’s Harvest Moon. They look stunning on and off the trees, but leave a god-awful mess in gutters and drain pipes if not cleaned out fast.
Autumn leaves can slow water flow and misdirect rainwater by blocking your guttering and drains. This can put your house at risk by funnelling water into places it shouldn’t go – like down your bedroom wall. That’s not hygge.
Spending a little time cleaning out guttering, raking leaves and checking out your drains helps avoid any autumn water problems. As leaves begin to fall, they can clog up your gutters and cause water to overflow. This can lead to water damage and other issues with your plumbing, such as blocked stormwater drains that your downpipes lead to. Clean out your gutters before the autumn rains start to ensure that water can flow freely away from your home.
Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat? We can clean gutters to just give us a buzz.
3 – Make Sure Your Hot Water System is Functioning Optimally
Your hot water system is one of the most important components of your plumbing system, so it’s crucial to ensure that it’s working properly. It’s going to get a hammering in the upcoming winter months, so ensuring it’s working optimally now in Autumn is best practice.
Check for any leaks or signs of damage, and make sure the temperature is set to the appropriate level for your home (In Victoria, plumbing regulations state hot water must be at a maximum of 50˚ at shower head or bathroom tap outlets). A tempering valve ensures that your hot water is stored at above 60˚ in your hot water system (to prevent bacteria growth) but exits your bathroom taps at a lower temperature to ensure scalding doesn’t occur.
4 – Get Your Roof Leaks Fixed Before Winter
We’ve had a relatively dry Summer, are the weather gods saving all the rain for Winter?? If you have a small roof leak, NOW is the time to do something about it before it turns into a big, fat, expensive mess.
Our award-winning plumbers all receive working at heights training when they join our team and each receive a harness to ensure their safety while providing solutions to your roofing problems.
Our roof experts can provide gutter cleans, repair roof leaks and repair entire roofs and gutters when required. Our initial investigation includes a detailed report, documented by pictures to help you understand the current condition of your roof, and pricing options depending on your budget.
We can also provide non-intrusive leak detection on your property. With infrared leak detection devices, we quickly detect problem areas that can’t be seen by naked eyes. Call Kathy today to have a chat about your roof issue.
5 – Get You Heating and Cooling Serviced
If you have gas ducted heating (like most new homes are in Point Cook, Sanctuary Lakes, Tarneit, Truganina and Williams Landing) the first few cold nights and wet weekends in Autumn may be the first time you turn your heater on in six months.
Book in a heater service at least every two years (as advised by Energy Safe Victoria). This detects any gas leakages (which can cause Carbon Monoxide poisoning), extends the life of your gas heater, and ensures that you can use your heater with no issues throughout winter.
McCarthy Plumbing Group can do absolutely everything plumbing-wise EXCEPT for heating and cooling servicing. For that, we use Point Cook locals and trusted plumbing heating and cooling specialists Supercool Heating and Cooling. They recently serviced our heater and changed our filters to ensure a cosy winter ahead. THAT’S hygge.
Now Off You Go And Enjoy Autumn
It’s time for you to enjoy kicking through those copper-coloured leaves… as long as you don’t go kicking them into your drains of course! Call us at McCarthy Plumbing Group on 03 9931 0905 if you need any of the above addressed this Autumn.
