Frozen outdoor water faucet covered in snowflakes
Shielding your pipes from the freezing cold is necessary to getting your rental properties through the winter without any untoward incidents. The last thing you need is a rental house with a burst pipe in sub-zero temperatures. It will make your Tulsa renters unhappy if they stumble upon a flooded, frozen rental home and find their ruined belongings. It will force you to spend a lot of money to fix up your real estate investment, not to mention the comprehensive clean-up it would also require. Heat taping and wrapping are just some of the necessary steps that you can take to prevent frozen pipes.
Heat taping is like an electric blanket for your pipes. It involves an electrical heating element that is taped to a pipe. It helps act as additional protection to keep the heat to the pipe keeping it from freezing. Wrapping a pipe can be prepared in various ways, from plug-in heating tape to pre-formed foam tube insulation that slides on over a pipe. The type of protection your pipes need depends on how cold it grows where your rental property is located and if your pipes are the right fit for heat tape. Outdoor water spigots should also be shielded with an insulated cover.
Preserving your rental home’s exposed pipes is just as necessary as those that are hardly seen. But, as a busy landlord, you probably do not have the luxury of time to go to your Ft. Smith home and take care of the pipes so you’d be tempted to ask your tenants to do it themselves. Leaving pipe insulation to your tenants may seem like a good idea, especially if you think about the time you can save, however, it may not be as good as it looks. Heat taping and wrapping your rental home’s pipes may not be a difficult task, but if your tenants have not had any experience doing home maintenance, then you’re better off asking a skilled professional to do it. There’s a strong possibility that your tenants will miss a step or two in the process, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.
One more resolution is to prepare the heat taping and wrapping yourself. Though it is true that insulating pipes is not a complex job, and that the supplies are usually obtainable, unless you also know what you are undertaking, you’re taking a risk with your investment. Pipe insulation also needs to be checked and replaced each year, which is another addition to your already long to-do list.
Obviously, with everything else you have to do, pipes might 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 Tulsa will administer and make sure the pipes in your Tulsa rental property are maintained on a regular basis, 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 918-895-7869 today!
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