02/01/2023
Stole this from a Mark Gay, who shared on FB all that I've been saying but worded better. Thank you Mark Gay!
We have some extra cold weather coming Friday so here’s a few things to remember:
PUT your programmable thermostat in PERMANENT HOLD; do not let it set back at night like normal. Your pipes WILL FREEZE with the wind blowing before water circulates through the baseboard again in that time period of the programmed set back and you will NOT have heat for the duration of the cold weather
Minisplit/heatpump people, this is when you turn it off and turn your fuel system on, particularly if you have hot water baseboard, even if your heat pump keeps the house comfortable your baseboard will freeze and potentially split due to the wind and pipe locations being low along exterior walls. Your house was originally designed to have hot water flowing through those pipes…
If your heating system is running, it is doing all it can to keep up, if it won’t bring the temperature in your house up, it simply can not do so and won’t until it warms back up outside. If the temperature slowly drops inside, just leave it running, that’s all you can do till it warms up outside.
If your trying to run a heat pump and it shuts down your best to leave it off. They will turn off on safety to keep from harming itself, flipping the breaker to get it to run repeatedly will harm the system.
It’s the wind that is going to make heating difficult and the wind chill factor that is pushing the heat loss on your house to be potentially colder than the design temperature of your heating system
Remember to be very careful with space heaters, they start fires
At the end of the day this is a temporary cold, while it may not warm up a lot Saturday. It’s mainly Friday night that is going to be your trouble, turn the heat up Friday, get the house warm, keep it running at a constant temperature
Remember, burning a few extra gallons of fuel is cheaper than a repair call or burst pipe damage. This is not the time for efficiency, it’s survival mode, preventative measures will save you the hassle of cleaning up a mess later.
