Making the necessary steps to protect your pipes from the freezing cold is crucial to making sure that your properties pull through the winter without any disturbances. You do not want to hear the news that your rental home has a burst pipe in sub-zero temperatures as it will make your Wichita renters miserable—nobody wants a flooded, frozen rental home and damaged personal property. As a landlord, such circumstance will leave you with costly renovations. Heat taping and wrapping are just two ways to avoid frozen pipes.
Heat taping is like an electric blanket for your pipes. It involves an electrical heating element that is tied to a pipe. It heats the pipe preventing it from freezing. Wrapping a pipe can be completed in various ways, from plug-in heating tape to pre-formed foam tube insulation that glides on over a pipe. The kind of protection your pipes need hinge on the severity of the weather where your rental home is, and if your pipes are the correct fit for heat tape. Outdoor water spigots must also be protected with an insulated cover.
Keeping a keen eye on your rental home’s exposed pipes is equally important as those that are hardly seen. Now, you probably have a full schedule and might find it hard to get to the pipes in your Wichita home before the cold comes. What do you do? You may have contemplated about proposing to your tenants that they will do the heat taping and wrapping on their rental home’s pipes. That might seem to be an ideal plan except leaving pipe insulation to your tenants isn’t always the greatest idea. You have no assurance that they are qualified to do the job or that they will do it correctly. It may have the impression that it’s not a big deal, however, unless they have home maintenance practice, there’s a likelihood they’ll fail to do the job correctly.
Another alternative is if you do the heat taping and wrapping manually. Although it is true that insulating pipes is not a difficult task, and that the resources are not hard to find, unless you also know what you are doing, you’re taking a risk with your investment. Pipe insulation also needs to be checked and replaced each year, which adds another potentially long job to your growing to-do list.
Obviously, with everything else you have to do, pipes may not make it on the to-do list as often as they should. That is why having someone take care of it for you can be the best decision you ever make. Real Property Management First Choice will inspect and maintain the pipes in your Wichita rental property consistently, providing maximum protection from freezing and bursting with zero effort on your part. For more information about our property management services, contact us online or call us at 479-242-0791 today!
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