Frozen Pipes

Frozen pipes are a common occurence during the cold season. To thaw a frozen pipe in your home, try turning on each faucet. If the water is flowing, run warm water through the pipes to help thaw the frozen spot. If no water flows, find the most likely places where pipes may freeze, such as unheated basements or crawl spaces. Turn on the faucets and use a hair dryer, portable heater, or warm wet rags to thaw the pipe. However, when water freezes inside PEX tubing, be sure to not overheat the tubing beyond the maximum recommended temperature.

A large selection of portable heaters and PEX Tubing can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Indirect Water Heaters

If you are looking for a smart and energy efficient way to heat the water in your home, try using an indirect water heater, such as a Weil Mclain Indirect Water Heater. Indirect water heaters use a boiler to circulate hot water from the boiler through a heat exchanger in a water heater tank. The energy stored by the tank allows a furnace to turn off and on less often, which saves energy. When used in conjunction with a high-efficiency boiler, an indirect water heater can be a cost-effective way to provide hot water for your home.

Weil McClain Indirect Water Heaters, along with a large selection of other indirect water heaters, heat exchangers, and high-efficiency boilers can be found at www.supplyhouse.com.

Prevent Unwanted Backflow

A backflow prevention device is used to ensure that water supplies are protected from contamination or pollution. Where water pressure fails or is reduced, dirty water from the ground or other sources can be drawn into the system. A backflow preventer such as a reduced pressure zone assembly, vacuum breaker, or a dual check valve can save you from the troubles of water contamination. Reduced pressure detectors and backflow prevention test kits additionally monitor and test the status of the device. Keep in mind that in some locations, backflow prevention devices are required by law and must be installed in accordance with plumbing or building codes.

Backflow Preventers can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Electric Towel Warmers

Electric towel warmers are a treat during the cold winter months, but did you know that they have other practical functions year-round? The units are handy for drying bathing suits in the summer, as well as delicates and hand washable items. By keeping your towels dry and fresh between uses, towel warmers also save on unnecessary laundry loads and water usage.

Electric towel warmers can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Clean your garbage disposal

A garbage disposal can be a great kitchen tool- it makes preparing food quicker and keeps your kitchen cleaner. But if your garbage disposer gets clogged or begins to smell, it can be way more trouble than it's worth. But don't worry, keeping your garbage disposal clean and odor-free is actually pretty easy. Just put a mixture of ice cubes, orange rinds, and a little baking soda down every once in a while. The ice cubes will eliminate any blockages and even sharpen the blades. And the orange rinds and baking soda will deodorize the unit so that it won't smell anymore.

Garbage disposers can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

What is the difference between different colors of PEX?

Different colors of PEX Tubing are structurally and functionally exactly the same, the only difference is the outside color. For PEX Plumbing tubing, there are typically three colors: red, white and blue. When installing, red is used for hot water and blue is used for cold water. This is a great way to see exactly which pipes go where, especially when there are a lot of pipes in one place. If you don't want to use the colors, the white PEX Tubing can be used for all of your plumbing needs.

PEX Tubing and other PEX Supplies can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Manabloc Supply

There are 3 separate supply lines that lead into a Manabloc PEX Manifold. Since the MANABLOC system is made for plumbing, there are no return lines. There are never return lines in plumbing manifolds because once the water goes out, it does not come back to be re-circulated. Since there are three separate supply lines (2 cold and 1 hot) that come into your Manabloc, you will need 3 supply adapters in order to connect your PEX Tubing. If you do not need to connect both cold lines and the hot line, you may use a supply end cap to cap off the line not being used.

Manabloc manifolds and other plumbing manifolds can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Buderus G115WS boilers can either be chimney vented or direct vented. All of the G115WS boilers that are sold on SupplyHouse.com come in a package ready for chimney venting. If you need the boiler with direct venting, please call our customer service representatives at 888-757-4774 and they can place a special order for the direct vent burner to go with the boiler that you need.

Buderus G115WS Boilers can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

New showerhead, smaller bills

The typical household spends about 14% of their energy bill on hot water and half of this is used for showers and baths. Using an energy efficient shower head and cutting down the time of your showers can save hundreds of dollars over a few years.

Showerheads and other energy efficient plumbing supplies can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Carrier Thermostats for Multiple Applications

Carrier's Debonair commercial thermostats are growing in popularity, eliminating much of the guesswork from matching thermostats to different applications. These thermostats can be used for multiple applications; for example, the Debonair Commercial Flatstat can be used for single-stage heating and cooling, 2-stage heating and cooling, heat pumps, gas or electric heating, and hydronic systems.

Carrier Debonair thermostats and other Carrier thermostat models can be found at www.supplyhouse.com.

Cut down on noise from your baseboard system with PEX

PEX tubing is a great option for your baseboard heating system and is much quieter than copper pipe. This is because the unrestrained liner expansion rate for PEX is much lower than the rate for copper pipe. For every 10 degree increase in temperature, standard PEX expands 1.1 inches per 100 feet.

PEX tubing and baseboard heaters can be found at www.supplyhouse.com.

Don't heat rooms you don't use

Do you have a room in your house that isn't used all the time-- a child away at college or maybe a guest bedroom? Don't heat it when it's empty! By having zones in your heating system, you will be able to separate where the heat is turned on, and where it can be left off. There is no reason to heat a room when noone goes into it, but you still want to be able to turn the heat back on when you need to. With a zone valve and zone control, that's easy. So save some energy, set up heating zones, and only heat the rooms you use.

Zone controls and zone valves can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Save water with each flush

You're flushing your money down the toilet if you're not using an efficient flush valve. Noone will ever know that you're using less water, except if they see your water bill. While standard flushers use 5 gallons or more of water per flush, a high efficiency flush valve can use as little as 2 gallons. Three gallons of water might not seem like a lot, but multiply it by the number of times your toilet is flushed per month and it adds up to big savings.

Sloan flush valves can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Hot water settings for Tempra

Stiebel Eltron Tempra Electric Tankless Water Heaters can be set for a wide range of temperatures for hot water. Is this heater going to the kids' bathroom? You can lower the setting as low as 86°F. And if you like your showers HOT, it can go as high as 140°F. Changing the setting is easy- just set the knob on the front of the unit and it will deliver water at the exact temperature that you want.

Stiebel Eltron tankless heaters and other Stiebel Eltron products can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

It's all in a nameplate

Bell and Gossett pumps feature a sturdy nameplate with a lot of information about the pump clearly displayed. The nameplate tells you the pump series, the model number of the pump, the year that it was made, the maximum liquid temperature, and short instructions to maximize the efficiency of your pump. The best part about the nameplate is that you can't lose it. Even if the paperwork gets misplaced, your pump's nameplate is permanently attached to your pump.

Bell & Gossett pumps can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Extend the life of your grease trap

A restaurant grease trap can take a beating over the years, but there are some things you can do to protect your grease trap and extend its life. First, inform all of the restaurant employees of how the grease trap works. If they know how it works, they will be less likely to abuse it and throw a whole vat of oil or large pieces of food down the sink. Second, make sure there is a strainer in all of the sinks. A strainer will keep the solids out of the sink, out of your pipes, and out of the grease trap. Third, make sure to do regular cleanings of the grease trap when it gets to be about half full. Allowing it to fill all the way to the top could slow your system, and not cleaning it thoroughly and allowing old grease to remain at the bottom of the trap for years is not good for the grease trap or the person assigned to clean it.

Grease traps can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Uncoiling PEX

Uncoiling your PEX Tubing can be difficult, especially in the cold weather. To make it easier, you can do two things. First, keep the PEX tubing in a warm place for as long as possible before you use it. Keeping it warm will allow it to become more pliable and easier to set in place where you want it. There is also a tool to help with uncoiling PEX. A PEX Uncoiler is especially useful when you have large coils or when you are working with a lot of tubing.

PEX Tubing Uncoilers can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Big power, small package

If you're tight on space, a tankless water heater is the perfect addition to your boiler room. Since there is no tank of hot water to be stored, tankless water heaters are typically very small. The Takagi T-K3 is only 13" x 20.5". When you compare that to a tank style heater or an indirect water heater, a tankless is truly tiny.

Tankless heaters can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Never let your heating pipes freeze again

With traditional copper pipes, it's usually not the pipe that freezes, it's the water inside. For heating pipes, glycol is the perfect solution. By using a mixture of glycol and water, you will get the same full heating capacity as with water, but the glycol anti-freeze will prevent the liquid from freezing (even in the coldest temperatures). Glycol can also be used in PEX tubing for radiant heat systems. Just be sure not to use glycol in plumbing pipes where you will be drinking the water.

Glycol and other radiant heat supplies can be found at www.supplyhouse.com

Hooking up a MANABLOC

To install a standard Viega MANABLOC manifold, you need to purchase supply adapters and mounting straps separately. The brass supply adapters allow you to connect 3/4" PEX Tubing to the manifold, and the mounting straps come perfectly aligned and ready for you to screw your manifold into place and keep it right where it needs to be.

Viega MANABLOCS can be found at www.supplyhouse.com