With the cold weather becoming a constant these days, it’s essential to ensure your home appliances and heating systems are working well to keep you warm day and night. When cold weather brings lower temperatures, you may find that these frigid temperatures can negatively affect your home appliances and heating systems. Here’s how cold weather affects these household necessities and what you can do to ensure your heating system and other appliances continue to work no matter how cold it gets.
How Cold Weather Affects Your Home Appliances
Cold weather can affect your home appliances in various areas of your house. However, you may find that the impacts are more significant if your home appliances are in colder regions of the home, such as your basement or garage. For example, ice could fill the water lines of your washer, or your refrigerator’s water lines could freeze if they’re located in colder areas of your home that don’t get much heating access. The result could be damage to the parts or your overall appliance.
How Cold Weather Affects Your Home Heating Systems
Cold weather can also adversely affect your home heating systems. If your HVAC unit gets covered with snow and ice, it may not work efficiently or shut down completely. These units often have emergency shutdown modes to protect from permanent damage. Also, if your heating unit stops working, your home might develop frozen pipes, which could break and cause water damage, resulting in an expensive mess for you to clean up.
What Should You Do?
In order to prevent cold weather from damaging your home appliances and home heating systems, keep the following tips in mind:
- Disconnect the water lines to the washer when not in use: If you’re using your washer infrequently and are worried about the lines freezing, disconnect them when not in use. Reconnect them when you are ready to do a load of wash.
- Use pipe insulation on the washer hoses and pipes: Insulation will help prevent these lines from freezing.
- Disconnect the water line to the ice maker when you’re not using it: You can disconnect the water line to your ice maker if you don’t use it that often. For example, if you have an extra refrigerator in your basement or garage, simply disconnect the water line when not in use to prevent freezing.
- Clear snow and ice from your HVAC system: When you see a buildup of snow and ice on your HVAC system, or one is starting to form, clear this area immediately.
Keep these tips in mind during the cold weather season to keep your home appliances and heating systems in good working order.
Contact the Air Design team to learn more about protecting your home heating systems during the winter!
