5 Important Winterization Tips For Homeowners

There’s no sense in sugar coating it, winter has arrived, and it’s time to starting battening down the hatches against Mother Nature’s icy chill. After a few months of sunshine and t-shirts it can be easy to forget how important it is to prepare your home for lower temperatures. Here are a few steps you can take to ensure you, your family and your home are ready for the coming colder weather.

Go On A Leak Hunt

Do you ever get a chill inside your home even when your thermostat says the temperature is warm? Have you ever burnt a candle in your living room and noticed the flame doing an elaborate dance? Are you struggling to keep your heating costs down? Any of these issues can be a sign of air leaks that are letting cold air into your home and allowing warm air to escape. Even very small leaks, combined throughout the entire area of a home, can add up to significant costs during a cold winter.

It’s worth the time to seek out the obvious leaks in your home that can be addressed with inexpensive fixes or repairs. While there are plenty of modern tools that can identify problem areas (more on that shortly), don’t be afraid to be your own cold air defense detective. Look for visible leaks around windows, doors and any other area where outside meets inside like recessed lighting, outlets and switches, and seal them with caulk, tape or appropriate gaskets. For harder to spot chinks in your home’s armor use a freshly extinguished match or burn an incense stick to help track the source of any drafts and eliminate them as you go.

Put The Cuffs On Repeat Offenders

Aging doors and windows are the number one source of heat loss in most homes, but if you can’t afford to replace every leaky sash and frame, don’t be afraid to just do a few at a time. Each new window will be one less place heat can escape and you can use plastic insulation kits to help insulate older windows. These commonly used and inexpensive kits include heat reactive plastic that is affixed over the window and then shrunk using a household hair dryer. The plastic serves as an extra layer of protection from leaks and the trapped air helps prevent heat loss.

One other tip, though it may seem obvious -- make sure you’ve slid down or installed any storm windows or doors in your home. The day the heat comes on is the day the screens need to be put away for the season.

Give Your Heating Ducts A Once Over

Moving from obvious sources of heat loss to those you may never have thought of, it’s important to occasionally inspect your heating ducts for leaks. Even the most efficient furnace won’t properly warm your home if your ducts are hemorrhaging hot air. This is another area where a professional service can be of assistance, but if there are obvious sighs of holes or pipe separation a roll of insulated tape is inexpensive and easy to apply, just be sure to purchase the right tape for the job.

Head Straight To The Top

One other less commonly inspected area of the home that’s important to investigate is the roof. In addition to an annual inspection to identify any leaks, flashing problems or damaged shingles, the way your roof performs in the winter can tell you a lot about how well your home is insulated. Improper attic insulation can lead to serious ice problems as snow melts in areas where heat is escaping from the home then refreezes elsewhere, creating potentially hazardous ice dams or other damage.

Get A Heating Inspection

In the end, the best way to ensure that your home is ready for whatever Mother Nature throws your way may be to enlist the help of professionals to perform a whole home heating inspection. Using thermal cameras and host of other assessment techniques these services can provide you with the peace of mind in knowing that you’re doing everything you can to maintain the heating integrity of your home, or offer tips on areas that could be improved.

Opal Enterprises, Inc offers a wide range of home care and contracting services and can assist you in keeping your home safe, warm and secure all year round. If you have questions about how you can improve the heating efficiency of your home, contact Opal Enterprises today.