Ensuring your home’s pipes are in good shape is essential for keeping your plumbing working properly. In terms of your water lines, one thing many homes could benefit from is having the pipes in certain areas insulated. We’ll explain which pipes you may want to insulate and what benefits it can provide.
Which Pipes in a Home Should Be Insulated?
Not all water lines in a house need to be insulated. It all really depends on where the lines are located within the structure, where you live and sometimes also whether the pipes supply hot or cold water. Having certain pipes within a house insulated is extremely important for people who live in colder climates that often experience below-freezing temperatures during the winter. In this case, there is a high chance that certain pipes can end up freezing and bursting even if the main part of the house stays consistently warm.
The pipes that have the highest risk of freezing are those in a crawl space where it can get extremely cold or those that supply water to the outdoor hose bibs. Some homes have their water heater in the attic, in which case the pipes that lead to and from the unit also need to be fully insulated to ensure they can’t freeze during the winter. Some parts of a house, like the voids in exterior walls or near the foundation walls, can also get cold enough for pipes to freeze even when the heating system is running.
There a much lower chance of pipes freezing if you live in a warmer place like the San Jose, CA area. Nonetheless, there are rare occasions when we experience a short period of freezing temperatures, so it’s wise to ensure that any pipes at risk of freezing are fully insulated. After all, what you’ll pay to have your pipes insulated is nothing compared to what you could pay for repairs should you have a frozen pipe that ends up bursting and causing a major flood in your house.
Benefits of Insulating Hot Water Pipes
Insulating some of the hot water pipes within your house can also provide a few important benefits. This is especially the case if your water heater is in an unconditioned part of your house like your attic or garage. Some homes even have their water heater under the main floor in the crawl space. You’ll often encounter several issues if your water heater is in an unconditioned space and the hot water supply line leading from it isn’t insulated even when the space isn’t all that cold.
The two primary issues concern energy/water waste and lag time, the amount of time it takes before hot water finally starts flowing when you turn a faucet or shower on. What happens is that the water in the supply line will quickly cool down to the temperature of the air surrounding the pipe. Once you start running hot water at any fixture in your home, it then takes some time before the pipe again gets hot. This isn’t a major waste of energy, but it will mean you could need to wait for a minute or more before the water flowing out of the fixture reaches the right temperature.
That means you can end up drawing up to a few more gallons of water out of your hot water tank than needed, which results in your water heater running slightly longer to reheat all of the water in the tank. A few gallons of water or a few extra minutes of your water heater running may not sound like much, but it does add up over time. If the supply line from where it connects to the water heater to where it enters the conditioned part of your home is insulated, the pipe won’t get nearly as cold, and you won’t notice these issues as much.
How Are Pipes Insulated?
The easiest way to insulate any water lines is to use pieces of foam pipe insulation. This type of insulation has a slit all the way down one side that allows it to just slide straight over any pipe. Once the insulation is in place, it then needs to be tightly secured with something like electrical tape so that it can’t come loose. When insulating pipes, you also need to ensure that the entire pipe is fully encased and there are no gaps in between the pieces of foam where air can still reach the pipe.
In some places where you have certain pipes that often freeze or are at a much higher risk of freezing, you might take a different route instead of insulating the pipes. In this situation, some plumbers recommend wrapping those pipes with heat tape. This tape has a small electrical wire inside it that gets fairly hot when the end of the tape is plugged into an electrical outlet. This generally keeps the pipe warm enough that it should never freeze no matter how cold the surrounding area gets.
Why You May Also Want to Consider Insulating Your Water Heater
All modern hot water storage tanks are required to have at least some level of insulation. The only issue is that the level required is often not enough to prevent the water heater from experiencing quite a bit of standby heat loss. This occurs when some of the heat from the hot water flows out through the sides of the tank, which eventually results in the water heater needing to run and reheat even when no hot water has been used recently.
If your water heater is located in an unconditioned area and isn’t sufficiently insulated, having it insulated will often reduce its energy usage by 5% to 15%. That’s because the insulating blanket will greatly reduce how much standby heat loss it experiences. Electric tank water heaters can especially benefit from being insulated since they tend to have greater issues with standby heat loss than gas units do.
One simple method of telling whether you can benefit from insulating your water heater is to put your hand against the tank and see if it feels warm. If the tank is properly insulated, it shouldn’t feel warm since the insulation will keep the outside of it at the same temperature as the surrounding air. If it feels warm or hot, it means the tank isn’t sufficiently insulated and could use more insulation.
Another thing you can do is look at the label on your water heater tank to see if it lists an R-value. The R-value tells you how well insulated the hot water tank is, and most experts recommend adding an insulating blanket if your tank doesn’t have a value of at least R-24.
If you’re looking for an experienced, reputable plumber in San Jose or California’s Silicon Valley area, Plumbtree Plumbing & Rooter is the one to turn to. We’re a local, family-owned and -operated company that has been providing exceptional plumbing, drain and sewer services to area residents for years. You can also count on us 24/7/365 for all of your emergency needs.
No matter whether it’s repairs, installation or maintenance, give Plumbtree Plumbing & Rooter a call, and let our team get to work meeting all your plumbing needs.
