Are your customers winter ready?
It’s important to remember that cold weather can cause pipes to freeze or burst. Following the advice on this page can help you and your customers handle problems caused by cold weather, get prepared for winter, and avoid unnecessary damage to your customers businesses/property.
To improve our communications to non-household customers during an incident please contact us directly to discuss the sharing of emergency details in line with the market guidance.Further information can be found in the Emergency Contact Details Guidance on the MOSL website.
Handling a problem caused by cold weather
Checklist for Non-Household Properties & Businesses
Our checklist outlines the steps your customers can take to help winter-proof their property
Insulation
- Insulate exposed water pipes in your loft and outside.
- You can use felt, pipe wrap or other insulating material and cover any outside pipe or fitting with a waterproof material.
- Toilet cisterns, water tanks or pipes in exposed places and unheated outbuildings could cause problems. Make sure they're insulated or ideally, drained during the winter.
- If you have an outside tap, insulate it too.
Watch our guide on how to insulate your pipes
Heating
- If your property is going to be empty for a long time, you might want to speak to a plumber about turning off your water supply and draining down the system.
- If you are going away for a short time, it is a good idea to leave programme your heating to come on at a low temperature (some systems have a frost setting). If possible, ask someone nearby to pop-in to your premises and check everything’s OK.
- If it’s very cold outside leave central heating on a low setting overnight.
- Make sure your boiler's been recently serviced to ensure it is running effectively.
- Reduce draughts by closing the doors and windows to parts of your property that aren't heated.
Drips
- Make sure you get all dripping taps fixed. Even a small trickle can lead to a frozen pipe.
Prepare for emergencies
- Check that your external and internal stop taps are working so you will be able to turn off your water supply in an emergency.
- Put a contingency plan in place in the event of an emergency.
- Keep the name and number of a qualified plumber to hand, you may find the WaterSafe scheme useful for finding an approved plumber.
- Contact your retailer to make sure they have the most up to date emergency contact details for you. These may be used by us should we have an emergency on our network and we need to keep you informed directly.
- Keep up to date with the weather in your region by signing up to free weather alerts which can be provided for free by the Met Office. These can be used to let you know when temperatures are forecast to drop in your area.
Keeping up to date
When there’s an incident that might affect your water supply, we want to make sure you’re kept in the loop. Please check our alerts pages for any updates on network issues we may have. You can sign up to text updates on this page if there is an event in your area.
For further information and tips on how to prepare for winter, please visit WaterSafe and the Met Office.