10 Ways to Prepare Your Home for winter
If you’re wondering about 10 ways to prepare your home for winter, this post will tell you everything. Winter is coming around the corner. The checklist below will help make sure you are prepared for the cold winter months ahead.
1. Check your pipes
Water pipes are very susceptible to break during the winter months. To make sure your house doesn’t flood this winter here are some helpful tips.
- Insulate your pipes with pipe sleeves or normal insulation. This will keep the water from freezing inside the pipe and causing the pipe to burst.
- Shut off the water to outside pipes and drain the water out if you can because you likely won’t be using the outside water pipe.
- Cover outside water house faucets with insulated covers.
3. Stay Warm this Winter and Check the Furnace
It would be horrible for your furnace to go out on the first day of winter. There is no idea how long it would take for a repairman to come out and fix it because many like you will be getting there’s repaired as well. To save money and stay warm, let’s check out the furnace now. Turn it on before it gets cold and see if the heat kicks on. If not, it’s best to call a technician out to come check on the furnace now while they are available. If you have an older furnace, it’s safe to go ahead and call a technician out now just in case you need a tune up or work down for it to work properly.
Don’t just check the furnace now, but check it at least once a month to make sure it is working properly and getting proper ventilation. The air filters may need to be changed to depending on how much the furnace is running.
3. Cut the Trees Back
During the winter, tree branches like to freeze up and fall. You’d hate for your tree to fall into your house or knock out the power during those cold days of winter. To keep you warm and prevent critters from getting into your house cut back your branches. Before cutting up the tree, identify which branches you need to cut down. You may need to consider a professional if the branches are higher than 20 feet. Please be careful and remember that tree branches are heavy and adding gravity can lead to a serious injury. These branches that are cut down will be good use for firewood, just in case your neighbor doesn’t trim back his trees.
4. Look for Cracks and Gaps
To keep heat in your house, look around for cracks and gaps that are letting in the cold air. Most of these gaps are located around doors, brick walls, and windows. The cracks and gaps in walls and windows can be sealed with caulk. Before adding a new caulk, remove the old caulk if there is any left from before. The door gaps can be difficult to fix depending on the door. The easiest way to fix drafts from a door is adding weather stripping. If weather stripping doesn’t work, an expensive but proven way to keep the cold out of your house is installing a storm door.
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5. Clean the Interior
During the winter months, our friends from outside move their way into our houses. These pests like to move into dark, cramped, and unreachable areas of our home. Removing the clutter now, will help keep them out. As I mentioned above, some of these areas may be unreachable or you may not have the time to clean and clear it out. Calling a house cleaning professional can help save time and your house will look amazing after they are done with it.
6. Save Money and Insulate
Adding insulation will keep the heat in the house during the winter, keep the furnace alive, and save you money. Insulation can be done by yourself but to save time you can hire a professional to install it. Before adding insulation check attics and basements for any potential drafts coming into the house. This will give you an idea of how much insulation you will need to buy.
7. Clean the Exterior
During the summer and fall, the outside of your house can become cluttered with pollen, nest, and pests. Going into the winter, you want to make sure this mess doesn’t come into the house. Honestly, cleaning outside can be difficult especially in those high to reach places, such as windows and porches, and you may need to call in the professionals to help clean those areas. Cleaning World, Inc. is one of the best companies in New Jersey that offers heavy duty house cleaning, window cleaning, and junk removal.
While cleaning up outside this is a great time to check and clean out gutters and vents. If gutters are not cleaned out they can lead to water sitting in them during the winter. This can cause the gutters to become heavy and fall off the house. Vents will need to be checked and cleaned on a regular basis to make sure the furnace is working as efficiently as possible. This will help keep electricity cost down and prolong the life of your furnace.
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8. Inspect Your Detectors
Usually when turning on the furnace, the horrible smell reminds you to check the carbon monoxide detectors. If it doesn’t, here is your reminder. Turning on the heat during the winter to stay warm does come with a risk, carbon monoxide poisoning and fires. To keep you and your family safe check your detectors and their batteries. Don’t just rely on the blinking lights from the smoke detector. Pull down the detector and make sure it works. If you haven’t changed out the batteries in a year, you should probably change them out now.
9. Organize
There’s no better feeling than going into the storage to pull out the holiday decorations. Except you open the door and you can’t even see the decorations because of storage. Start organizing your decorations now before it gets too late in the holiday season. This will help you know what decorations you have and what decorations you need.
10. Clean out the Chimney and Fireplace
Before you start the fire, check out the chimney and fireplace. Birds, insects, pests, and squirrels could be living there currently or left their nest in there. To make sure your chimney is safe for a fire, light a small piece of paper to see if the smoke travels up the chimney. If it does not, you will need to call a chimney sweep to come clean out the chimney. Chimneys overtime become dirty from fires and smoke. This can lead to the chimney catching on fire. If you use your fireplace a lot, you will need to have a chimney sweep clean it out at least once a year.
Conclusion
After performing all of these steps in the fall, your home will be ready for winter. These steps will take some time and possibly a little money to do. However, skipping them will definitely end up costing you much more both in time and money.
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We hope these 10 ways to prepare your home for winter have helped and wish you all the best.
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