If the temperature inside a house gets below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0° Celsius) it’s likely that the water supply pipes and the drain traps will freeze.

When water freezes it expands 9 percent, and if there is no room for expansion it’s possible that the pipe will burst. When the ice thaws the pipe will leak, and in the supply system this leak could occur anywhere. Fixing a burst pipe can be expensive, but the damage from uncontrolled water leakage can easily reach into the thousands of dollars. Believe me, you do not want to experience the hassle and expense of having a pipe burst and spraying water all over your basement, or anywhere in your home.

A properly-insulated house built to current building codes will probably never experience this problem under normal conditions. What do I mean by normal conditions? The heating system runs properly, the electricity supply stays on, and the furnace fuel supply never runs out.

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Water flowing in pipes can cause all kinds of weird noises. We all know what water running through a pipe sounds like, but what about some of those other plumbing sounds – like creaks or cracking sounds, rattling, whistling and the most annoying or scary of them all, that loud banging noise? Let’s look at what causes those sounds and how you can fix them.

Creaks or a cracking sound
These are usually caused by the expansion and contraction of the water pipes themselves. As hot water runs through a pipe, it naturally heats the pipe, causing it to expand slightly. Once the water stops flowing, the pipe cools and the metal contracts, resulting in the creaking or cracking sound. The easiest way to fix this is to put some insulation around the pipe, or if the pipe is running through a tight fitting hole in the wood framing, cut a notch in the framing so the pipe can expand and then contract without that creaking sound.

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