How to Ready Your Home Before Winter Hits

 

The leaves are already changing from green to their golds, oranges, red, and yellow colors now that autumn is here. This is the best time to think about how to ready your home before winter hits if you hope to stay warm and cozy. Instead of suffering through related cold weather problems, here are some useful home winterizing tips to get your house prepared.

What to Do Outdoors to Ready Your Home Before Winter

While the weather is still good, check your gutters and condition of your roof for damage. Clean them out of all the leaves, dirt and other debris that could have settled there before it gets too cold. If you fail to do this, gutters can load up with that unwanted accumulation and cause a blockage of water as soon as it freezes. The result could be having your roof leak at the worst time of year.

If you have hoses connected for watering your lawn or garden, you don’t want to forget closing off the water when you take them inside.

You also may want to examine trees and high shrubs, especially if planted too close to your home. Pruning them back can help keep flying branches, a mountain of leaves and twigs from causing damage later during bad winter weather.

Those that use a gas-powered lawn motor should also consider draining them before storing indoors until next season.

Pools also need some attention. An above ground pool basically needs to be drained enough so you can clean out the plumbing system. This is usually below skimmer levels. If you skip this bit of maintenance, the pool’s plumbing lines could later freeze and burst. Once you finish cleaning this out, cover it with a pool cover to keep other debris from clogging the system.

On the other hand, if you have a built-in pool winterizing them can vary depending on the lining material whether vinyl or concrete. For a pool with a vinyl lining, keep about six to 12 inches of water at the shallow end. Most people tend to drain a built-in concrete pool, but some others believe draining it completely is not a good idea. The reason it may be harmful is how an unfilled concrete pool’s structure can adversely change from weather conditions beneath the ground.

You also don’t want to wait to last minute covering your patio furniture. Look for waterproof material and ones with a secure way to tie or attach them to your furniture. Needless to say, you also need to make sure that you measure properly to best protect your pieces.

You also might want to take care with your air-conditioning unit outside. What you should do is lift the unit’s metal or plastic cover and turn the inner switch off. Then you want to use a hose to clean out leaves, insects, twigs, dirt, etc. that may have fallen. Be sure to let your work dry before wrapping and securing exposed exterior pipes with foam pip covers to keep them from freezing. Finally, shield the unit with a waterproof cover that snugly fits.

How to Ready Your Home Before Winter Inside

A good thing to do is check your furnace and heating system for efficiency. Start by turning your thermostat to about 80-degrees and noticed how quickly the heat comes on. If it takes longer than several minutes, then call a service man because it needs to be looked into.

Another helpful suggestion is cleaning all your vents. You don’t want to have dirt blocking air or blow back into your rooms.

Make sure also to change your furnace filter every month. This will help furnace efficiency, lessen dust and save you money on your bills.

Also it helps to caulk windows and add weatherstripping near doors as a way to ready your home before winter from letting cold air inside.

Hot water tanks and exposed pipes in your basement should also get special treatment. Try wrapping your hot water tank with insulation. It also is beneficial to keep pipes in garages and basements that may not be as warm as the rest of your house wrapped with foam. You don’t want to have anything freezing like a waterline pipe.

A little extra time now spent to ready our home before winter can save you costly repairs and warm comfort later!