It is very important to make sure that your home is prepared for all that mother nature can bring during winter. Follow these following tips in order to reassure that your house is ready for those unpredictable winter months.
Windows:
Windows are the one of the top reasons for unwanted drafts in your home. In order to prevent cold air from creeping into home, you can simply just purchase some heavy duty plastic and a heavy duty staple gun from your local store and staple the plastic around the windows on the outside of your home. My husband and I do this every year and the results of it are great.
Weather Stripping:
If you look at your door and you can see light coming in, then that means cold air can get in as well.
Use weather stripping on or around your doors in order to keep out cold air.
Caulking:
If there are cold spots in your home, and you can’t get to it with weather stripping, you can always use caulk. Caulking will seal the gaps and drafts.
Gutters:
Before winter sets in be sure to clean out your gutters. This step will make it so that water from ice and snow can fall freely off your roof and not build up in your gutters. Moisture can potentially cause mold and that can spread quickly before you even know that it’s there.
Furnace:
One thing that my husband and always do is get our furnace serviced. We always make sure that it is working properly before turning it on for the winter. Also, we buy one month filters, so every month we make sure to change the filters out.
Central Heat and Air Units:
When we first bought our home, we added a huge deck in the back. When planning the deck we realized that it would cover our central heat and air unit. We called our local repairman and asked if that would be alright, and he stated that as long as our deck was so many feet above the unit, then that would be fine. Well…. He was wrong. When winter set in our unit began to not work properly, then during the worst part of winter our unit stopped working all together. We contacted our home owners insurance and they sent a repairman out to fix it. He stated that the reason for our problem was because ice from our deck was falling directly into our central heat and air unit, which was jamming it. The repairman had to move the unit away from deck and repair the damage from the ice. Thankfully, we had home owners insurance that covered it, but we still had to pay a deductible of $500. So, before winter sets in check and make sure that nothing can potentially fall into your unit and cause damage.
Ceiling Fans:
If you don’t have them, install them. Ceiling fans circulate air, and in doing so, it allows your entire house to become heated easier. If you don’t have ceiling fans then, your warm air will just set in one area and your heater will have to work harder to heat your entire home.
Purchase a Energy Efficient Heater:
My husband and I purchased a cool to the touch Sunheat heater for our home in the summer when the prices were cheaper. We have used it every day that it has been cold. We own a tri-level home and this heater will help heat two levels. I can keep our thermostat on our central heat and air on 65 degrees and keep the heater turned on high and it will get up to 80 degrees in my home. Usually our electric bill is always over $100 dollars, but for the last couple months our bill has been under $100.
Insulation:
Make sure that your home is insulated properly. With out realizing, we purchased a home that had the minimum insulation required in a home. So, this year we are going to put spray-in insulation in our garage. It is always cold in there because it is not insulated properly. Also, every year since we have owned our home, we have had to keep our water dripping at night so that our pipes won’t freeze. So, this year we are also going to spray foam all of our pipes.
Trim Trees:
Check all your trees around your property and make sure that if a branch were to fall that it wouldn’t damage your home. Trim back trees and branches that can be potentially hazardous.