How To Insulate Pipes

Have you ever had a burst or frozen pipe? Although we’ve had a few minor catastrophes (which never seem small at the time), we’ve been lucky enough not yet to have had anything majorly go wrong. Fingers crossed it will stay that way!

Trying to avoid any future disasters, we spent some of this weekend insulating our pipework, as well as trying to finish the staircase for the big reveal tomorrow (still a bit to go yet!),

We’d already started insulating the pipes a while ago, but for some reason had missed out the corners which is really no good at all.

This is what it looked like before this weekend:

You can see that we chose tubular-sleeve insulation. It comes in a lots of different sizes and is very cheap and extremely easy to install. As my glamorous assistant aka. Jan is demonstrating (okay, so maybe not so glamorous), you can easily cut it to length with a knife.

We missed insulating the corners the first time around, so be sure to cut the insulation at an angle so that you won’t be left with any gaps.

Then all that’s left to do is wrap it around the pipe. Any joints should really be covered with duct tape to make sure that the insulation is completely sealed.

Doesn’t it look much better even adding the first angled piece of insulation? And this is the result

You should insulate your water pipes as well as your heating pipes. Insulating your heating pipes will save you money, as it will reduce the heat that can escape and the water will stay hotter.

Insulating your water pipes is important, as it will reduce the risk of your pipes freezing which could cause them to burst. This is especially important in unheated areas like your loft or in any crawl spaces and in our case the whole cellar.

To further reduce the risk of our pipes bursting, we always leave the heating on a low setting, even when we are away as this will help heat the pipes.

Hopefully an hour or two of work and just a few pounds for the insulation will help us avert a disaster in the future.

Have you ever had a burst or frozen pipe? Or have you had any other home disaster?