How to Blow Out Your Home/Cabin Plumbing For Winter

hi I'm Jay and today I'm going to show you how to blow out the plumbing in your cabin or second home for the winter that way your pipes won't freeze everyone's house and plumbing are different but what you need to do is walk around your home and find everywhere in your house that water runs so your sink the drain the sprayer the dishwasher you may have an icemaker your bathroom sink or sinks a toilet of course your bathtub and your jetted tub also needs to be blown out as well as if you have a showerhead on a hose like that we'll need an air compressor in order to hook up to your plumbing in your home and some faucet where you can connect to it best place would be if you have hookups for a washing machine on the hot connection and I will show you why a little bit later in this video that would be your best place to connect up your air compressor well how do you do that you need to either purchase or make your own adapter that'll go from an airline to a regular hose fitting I have videos on that and I will put a link in the description on how to make one if you'd be interested in that otherwise let's get started for getting started it would be very wise to have some water on the side just in case you need it for emergency washing or drinking or anything like that this house is equipped with a well pump it says h2o pump right there and we're gonna need to shut the breaker for that I'll show you also that the hot water which happens to be electric in this house that breaker has already been turned off and you do want to do that ahead of time and hopefully you can make use of the hot water you already have in the tank washing dishes or other some such at that point but right now it is time to kill the breaker for the pump you still have some water so we have to get rid of that now your next step before turning on the water with the pump off should your house be so equipped is to remove the aerator from your faucet we're gonna be kicking up all sorts of dirt and debris in all of your plumbing that you didn't know was there all sorts of minerals and particulate matter a lot of it will end up on that little filter screen there so remove your aerator and set it aside until you're ready to open your house back up this will allow the water to flow very freely it also is going to be kind of splashy as you see it's kind of not really a nice screen but we're gonna leave the water run until it absolutely runs out what we have here is residual pressure left in the well tank that is running out and once that stops then we can proceed on and now the pressure just ran out I'm just gonna leave that let it drip out the remaining and then shut the faucet here and at that point it's time to go outside and in this case under the house to get started blowing everything out here is the air compressor we're going to use for this operation this happens to be a central pneumatic six gallon compressor from Harbor Freight usually sells for about ninety nine dollars and should do the job for just about any house really the owner of this home also uses this in her other home to blow out her in-ground sprinklers and for that it's just enough so it really does double duty between here in the other place anyway it's time to get it started up and let the tank fill another quick word on air compressors this happens to be an oilless variety compressor an oil lubricated compressor typically will last much longer but they have a heck of a trouble starting in the cold and if that happens to you because that's the compressor you happen to have well you can go ahead and heat that with a hairdryer until you can get it started and generally once you do get it started you should be good to do the job okay we have a charged airline and over here is under the house this is all we got folks but it'll do exactly what we need there are two faucets here for a watch for hookup unfortunately the who plumbed this house did it backwards if you think of a regular sink that's hot and that's cold well in this house they're reversed found out by trial and error so that's why you see the outlet hose this green one is on the left on the cold we're gonna be blowing air in through the hot and it will come out the cold here's the reason we're going to do that this represents your water heater as you can see the cold water enters in at the bottom of the tank but the hot comes out at the top so if we blow air in the direction of the arrows that's going to force all that water up and empty the entire hot water tank for us at the same time the reason that you blow out your pipes is so they don't freeze we all know what that's about that would be a representation of your pipes and here's a cross-section what you see on the left is where the water level in your pipes is now if that freezes that pipe is going to burst but as you see on the right the water level is just a little trickle at the bottom and if that freezes it won't cause any problem so now we're ready to actually do this Hey hooked up to the hot over here is a washing machine hose just a regular washing machine fill hose here is the other end of it it's an air fitting and the way I did this was to simply lop off the end of this hose get two of these air fittings that screw together as you can see right there jam it in the hose and put on a hose clamp it works great only cost you a couple of bucks and it'll also work for your in-ground sprinkler system should you have one well this device is not necessary to do this this is called a regulator you have one already on your air compressor usually with a red knob and you can turn that until the dial on your air compressor reads approximately 30 psi we've already set this one to 30 it reads much higher now because that's reading full tank pressure but when we expel air from it this will go down to 30 or in this neck of the woods here before we administer air to the system is the main water shut-off now again we have the well pump off and all that's fine and good but we don't want air coming back through the house and going down and possibly damaging or destroying your well pumper or the expansion tank or anything like that so we're gonna close this off to isolate the air from the house from this stuff we'll get to this later on now the job is to blow out the hot water tank all of the hose is connected the pressure is dialed in at 30 psi again the gauge will not register that now until we go ahead and turn things on we're blowing in through the hot and out through the cold so let's open the cold first we hear a little bit of water just draining in the pipes and that eventually is going to go outside we are now going to open this valve very slowly and water will start coming out outside through this green hose just a little at a time here and you'll hear all sorts of sounds okay you hear our compressor is running well now we get the Sameer that's good and we're just gonna let this run till we don't see any more water really your outlet hose is going to be jumping around as you see here so we haven't poil de route of plant or what's left of a potted plant and you see how it's really just err mostly and a little coffee and spit of water that's what we want to see here that means we're in the homestretch I've moved our hose here because the warm water going through it made it pliable in this cold weather and all we have is a little gurgle water coming out along with some steam if you can actually catch that because again this was hot water that was in the tank now we're ready to move on we have mostly gotten mostly gotten the hot water tank empty we're gonna hit it strain valve but we'll do that a little bit later right now we're gonna move on to the other plumbing of the house I'm gonna go ahead and stop the air coming in by shutting this valve remember this black hose was the air hose and we'll let our compressor settle down and we're also gonna shut down our outlet hose so this way it'll blow out all the pipes and the rest of the house so I'll shut that as well and we're just gonna wait for our compressor to cycle off okay our compressor is stopped now remember we've shut off our outlet but we're going to turn the air back on and what's gonna happen is all the pipes in the house now are going to get pressurized with 30 psi as will the tank here that's okay there's no need to worry about it because your water pressure is probably more like 60 or even more psi so we're just cutting out in half to err on the side of caution your compressor is probably gonna run non-stop during this period and now we're gonna go around to all the places I told you about earlier in the video any place in your home that uses water now needs to be taken care of turn our air back on okay tank is filling with air unfortunately Mother Nature was not kind to us look what happened to our hose frozen solid and we have no way of taking care of that now so it's just gonna have to be in this case your best bet is to disconnect it from the faucet there and don't touch it don't step on it don't kick it don't throw anything at it because if you do that could break your hose again we're not talking about the end of the world here worst thing is you'll have to either mend your garden hose or buy a new one okay remember we remove [Music] with that blowout is month with Japan and then open your hall also you may want to suck the cold because now it's on it will happen look at that more water learn about the foggy lens but like I said it's cold out I have the hot on okay let's come running for this open both your hot and cold and let that blast as much as you can out of there it looks like our air pressure is settling down a little bit but we're alright just let that get out as much as you feel comfortable with the more water you get out the better you drop sorry I'm gonna hurry but get out as much as you can don't forget any little items so your sprayer doesn't seem like there's anything in it so that's good okay we've done the sink here now we're gonna do the dishwasher you just need your rinse cycle so quick rinse and start there you hear that now we blew all the water out of that let that run for a minute and on this one we can hit cancel now it's going to do a dream and take care of whatever it has to do and stop we'll get back to it later on you have an ice maker now is the time have it call for water and it'll start blasting out air let's move on to other areas of the home bathroom water whole before exhibit area but it is out there but that was wise [Music] right we're gonna do the toilets last and you're gonna see why but now we're going to do the tub so we're going to go ahead and make sure it's on the company [Music] started to hog we get a little bit out and put the shower on here's why you want to do your toilets last when you go and blast that this float is gonna go down and turn this on so it's going to be constantly expelling air out from here if there's water in here which you see there is because we have one final flush here then that is going to go splashing around so keep the tank top on when you flush it for the last time when you do flush it make sure you hold the handle down I'm going to show you that in a second fortunately we have a kind of fancy filler here which I have replaced in another video some time ago and this little white thing can move to actually hold this valve closed which is a really nice thing if you don't have that that's not a problem you still have your shuttle for your toilet there that you can go and stop that if there's another sink or tub or other bathroom or what-have-you that you haven't done yet and here is your last swash hold this down there's the air [Applause] keep holding that for all five to ten seconds or so now you can let go like I said now it's gonna keep running and there we are we'll just stop it right there again if you don't have one of those you can use your shuttle off right there so what we're gonna do is just run around one more time [Music] that one looks pretty good right there couple drops aren't gonna hurt you here okay that's all we got so we're gonna shut the air down this had actually frozen but it just froze here so [Music] now we can shut off here as well this happens to leak a little bit but it's only air it doesn't do it with water one last thing to do is to open the drain valve on your water heater this one unfortunately is kind of pointing toward the wall you can put a hose on that if you want but there's just rocks and dirt here more water you never know where it's gonna hide drain valve on our expansion tank so we're going to open that up Oh more water like I said you never know where it is and because there's still a little bit of air I'm gonna sneak a little bit through this way just a drop [Music] just to blow out the residual there and let that this gurgle there we are shut the air off it is recommended that you leave this open but don't forget in the spring because if you do and you turn the water on this whole area is gonna flood here it's just dirt and rocks so it doesn't make any difference but probably a good idea to leave it open I'm not gonna do that here because I may not be here in the spring to open this house up as it's not mine at this point we are done with all of our hoses and blowing air through the system so the drain hose can come off be stored for next year this can be shut if it's still open same thing here but we still have a charged line so we can disconnect it right there or just shut it with the valve either way it doesn't make a difference okay now we've taken care of where water can get into the house now let's take care of the drains rail where water comes out of the house you're still gonna need your compressed air for that and a blowgun here's a blowgun we no longer need the regulator or any of that stuff you can use full pressure for this now we need to take care of the drains there are traps under the sink that keep a small amount of water in there you don't want that to freeze either because that could burst a pipe so the best way being that you have will your compressed air right on hand is take an ordinary plunger that you can unscrew the handle from and drill a small hole in that see it there that will go over your drain then you could jam your air blowgun in there and blow that out so we just put the little blowgun tip right in that hole that we drilled to push down while you do that to make sure you get a good seal here you can hear it when you blow out one drain and you blow out another and that's all kinds of gunk that was in there but just clean it up with a paper towel do the bathroom sink or sinks you can also blow out your overflow just in case tub drain you can also do if you have a jetted tub put that over the air I'm sorry over the water inlet and blow that out you're gonna have to get the water out of the toilet you can use your blowgun on that if you want where you can mop it out with a big sponge your choice okay here's a jug of RV antifreeze we have since mopped out the inside of this best you can don't have to be perfect and over here is a jug of our the antifreeze one gallon you can pick this up at Walmart and auto play auto supply house Home Depot Lowe's Menards depending what you have you may need a second gallon one gallon will suffice for this house we're gonna take this now we're gonna pour in just in the bottom of that just some that should be fine a toilet no that's not what you think it is it's actually a little piece of purple sponge no need to worry it'll go down the drain another time let's pour in some of the red stuff here just till it covers that pole up see we want to get just above just like that see how it's right above the lip there perfect awesome down each drain how much is up to you I'm drain summon there that one remainder of that will go in the dishwasher they see all the little holes at the bottom that's what you're going to aim for and we're just going to pour the rest of the bottle in there probably good idea to leave your dishwasher propped open a little bit like that same thing with your fridge and your freezer you'll notice that except for the few items we're going to take with us everything is empty here and clean down so it's moving condition in the spring put something in between the doors like the sponge you use or something leave a bottle in the door on each so it stays open and then in the spring just let it cool down so that's it some of the best practices for blowing out your house plumbing for the winter I hope this video helped you out if it did please consider clicking the like and subscribe buttons that lets me know I did a good job making this video and I can continue to provide them for you thanks so much for watching and have a great day

Channel: jaykay18

Views: 163,440

Keywords: Jay's Bar, Club Jay, cabin, cabin fever, cabin in the woods, summer home, second home, second house, summer house, winterize, shut down, blow out, blowout, plumbing, pipes, water heater, hot water heater, hot water tank, domestic water supply, turn off, shut off, close down, compressed air, air compressor

Id: z4a5AuaMTyw

Length: 23min 48sec (1428 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2016