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Is your home properly outfitted for the winter cold? If not, it’s time to take some notes, because you need to get everything ready for when the real cold rolls in. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest things you can do to help make your home winter ready.
Get in and clean your gutters! If there’s significant leaf buildup in your gutters, there’s likely also standing water in them. This heavy blockage could cause your gutters to sag, which, in turn, could be catastrophic if they pull off from the house.
Also, it’s dramatically more difficult to clear frozen chunks of leaf debris from your gutters than it is to clear normal leaf debris. So, make sure you clean your gutters BEFORE a freeze, not after. When a snowstorm drops a ton of moisture on your house, you’ll be glad you did.
Head down to the basement or crawl space and check out your pipes. If they’re not wrapped, you should wrap them. This can help prevent cracks from appearing along their surface. While you’re doing this, you can also check for existing cracks in your pipes.
If you detect any, this is a great chance to have the pipes replaced or at least have the cracks patched.
Check around all the windows of your home to ensure that they’re getting a good seal. Windows that aren’t properly closing or sealing can result in you throwing warm air out into the winter night instead of heating your home.
That’s bad for your power bill, the environment and the temperature in your home.
The same goes for your doors. Make sure all of the exterior doors to your home have proper weather seals so that they’re not letting warm air escape out into the cold.
While you’re looking into this, consider getting a storm door if you don’t already have one. This helps add an extra layer of insulation.
Many home insurers can help cover the costs of winterizing precautions. After all, they’re happy to help you not need to make claims later in the winter!
As such, it helps to call them once you’ve got your checklist of winterizing tasks to see which ones they might be able to help you out with.
