Now is the Time to Winterize Your Home

Winterizing your home is something that needs done once a year. You don’t want to wait till the first cold day of the year to realize that you still need to do this yearly chore. Now is a great time of year to check the batteries in your smoke detector, and carbon monoxide detectors to ensure your safety over the winter months.

Before the first frost of the season you will want to check a few things and also prepare a few things for the year. You want to check the fireplaces. Most of the time you will want to hire a professional to do this. This is very dangerous if not properly working correctly. A fireplace that needs cleaned can cause a fire in the home. This is the first thing that you want to have checked out before you use it for the year. You furnace will also need checked out to ensure that it’s in working order. Waiting till the cold morning to find out that the furnace isn’t working properly isn’t the best time to discover that. You will also want to change the furnace filter at this time.

Outside you will want to drain hoses and put them up for the winter so they don’t burst in the cold weather from the water freezing. Check the heat tape around the pipes outside to make sure that they don’t burst on freezing days is a quick way to save you money during the cold months. If the heat tape isn’t working around the exposed pipes, replacing it is easy to do. Hardware stores will sell heat tape.

Checking the windows and adding weatherstripping is a cheap and efficient way to save money on heating costs. Checking around the doors and windows to see if there is any gaps, and close them up with chalking or weatherstripping. Now will be the time that you will want to put plastic on the windows to keep the warm air inside.

Checking the condition of the snow shovels, and snow blowers is going to be on the list for the winter preparations. Make sure that you have rock salt for icy days so that you can have it ready to melt the ice.

While this may sound like a long list, it will save you money in the winter months, as well as keeping you safe during the cold months. If you prepare for winter before the cold weather actually comes it will be easier than trying to repair things in the cold weather.