How to Insulate Pipes
Prepare for the cold weather with a DIY pipe insulation project.
One of our biggest goals in winter is to prevent pipes from freezing, but the climate isn’t always in our favor. Thankfully, pipe insulation is an affordable and simple DIY project to do on a weekend before the cold weather hits. With a few simple tools and a minimum investment in insulation supplies, you can have all your pipes insulated within a day with this simple guide.
Prepping for Pipe Insulation
You can find all the tools you need from any large hardware store. Home Depot and Lowe both have an extensive insulation aisle with a wide variety of foams, tapes, and fiberglass tapes to choose from.
Standard foam insulation tapes are about $0.50 per foot. A slightly more affordable option would be fiberglass pipe wraps, which are about $0.20 to $0.30 per foot. However, fiberglass kits are messier and require more experience to handle.
Another great insulation option is insulation foam tubes. These come in different diameters and typically cost $3 to $5 per 6ft tube, depending on the size.
Safety Precautions
If you use fiberglass pipe wraps, ensure you have protective glasses and gloves on. Removing fiberglass from your skin can be difficult and painful and could cause severe irritation and skin damage.
Additionally, inspect your pipelines to see if there are existing asbestos insulations. These look like white cloths wrapped around pipes and ducts and are usually found in older homes. Never attempt to remove asbestos, as it will cause severe lung damage or even lead to cancer. Placing your new insulation around them would be sufficient.
Identify What Pipes to Insulate
Your first step is to identify what pipes actually need to be insulated. Ideally, everything going from your water heater to distribution points should be insulated for cold weather. However, if you don’t have full access to your house’s plumbing system, focus on the pipes running out of the water heater.
Pipes running toward the heater do not need insulation. Pipes carrying cold water throughout the house also don’t need to be insulated.
Insulating with Foam Tubes or Foam Sleeves
Foam tubes are one of the easiest tools to use for DIY pipe insulation. The only disadvantage is they work best with straight lines but not so much with turns and curves.
1. Measure the pipes
Measure the pipes you want to insulate. Again, these are pipes going from the water heater to your distribution points, such as kitchen faucets, bathroom faucets, and showers. Use a utility knife to cut out the tubes into proper lengths.
2. Wrap the Sleeve Around
Lay the foam sleeve horizontally against the pipe and open the slit on the side. Gently slide the sleeve over your pipeline and let go. The slit should naturally close up around the pipe.
To run foam tubes around corners, carefully miter-cut with a utility knife. Be careful not to scratch the pipe surface when doing so.
3. Finish Insulation
Since most foam insulation tubes come in standard 6ft lengths, chances are you might need multiple tubes for each pipeline. To ensure full insulation, tape over the seams where two sleeves meet to prevent cold from seeping through the insulation. You can also tie cable ties around the foam tube throughout the coverage for stronger insulation.
Insulating with Tapes
1. Peel Off the Sticker
Your pipe insulation tapes should look like pressed foam strips on a sticker. Only peel a corner of the sticker off to expose the adhesive side of the insulation tape. Overpeeling may cause your tape to stick together or dry out faster.
2. Wrap the Pipe
Place the peeled tape diagonally onto the pipe and begin wrapping the tape around the pipe. Make sure the wrap is tight, and use your fingers to remove any air bubbles. When wrapping the insulation tape, ensure each wrap overlaps the previous one for a better seal. Wrap more tightly at corners and turns, as these areas are more prone to insulation failure.
3. Cut off the End
Once the pipe is fully wrapped, cut off the end of the tape. You may want to leave a good 6” tail on the tape to wrap it back around instead of cutting the tape off right at the end. This makes your insulation more reliable. If necessary, use duct tape or cable ties for additional security around the beginning and the end of the tape wrap.
Bonus: Frost-Free Faucets
Frost-free faucets are a great addition to pipe insulation to prevent your water lines from freezing in the cold weather. They also provide an extra layer of protection against burst pipes.
Generally, frost-free faucets are designed to prevent water from being trapped inside the faucet to prevent water from freezing, expanding, and bursting the pipe. These faucets have a special valve stem located inside the house. When the faucet is turned off, water drains out of the valve body where it’s warmer.
DIY vs. Hiring a Pro
Pipe insulation is a simple project unless you want to do some major upgrades. Hire a local contractor to repair or install a new faucet. If you plan on replacing any outdated cast iron pipes before adding insulation, you’d want the help of a trusted plumber.
Overall, DIY pipe insulation is a great way to help your house through the winter without spending too much. And the money you save from insulation can go to other parts of your home that might need more comprehensive upgrades.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most foam insulation sleeves in the market are self-sealing. This means the slit reseals automatically once the sleeve is placed around the pipe. This design makes insulation extremely easy to do on your own. They are also more energy efficient, creating a stronger insulation seal even with drastic temperature drops.
Finally, foam tubes are one of the most affordable DIY insulation materials you can find.
Absolutely. A frozen water pipe can cost you way more to fix, especially if there has been a burst. The average cost of hiring a plumber nowadays is $332 and can easily go up to $500 depending on the scope – that’s three to five times higher than what DIY insulation would have cost!
Spray foam is not the most efficient material to use for pipe insulation. You can use spray foam insulation behind the wall in your shower if the water pipe is loose to provide more stabilization. Still, overall, you want to stick with either insulation tape or foam sleeves for pipe insulation.
Spray foam insulation is also harder to apply. Someone without professional knowledge can find spray foam insulation challenging and often fail to properly insulate the water pipes. Mis-applied spray foam can also pose health and fire hazards.