The winter season can be harsh for your home. In fact, hundreds of houses are destroyed every winter, which often results in huge repair costs. To avoid this, you need to prepare your house for this season.
Winter-preparedness is an essential part of every homeowner’s life. This is not just to keep your house free of damages but also to maintain your family’s safety. Extreme cold can be harmful, and this article is all you need to have everything prepared.
Winter-Preparedness Tips
There are lots of things you need to consider before the winter arrives. While some of these are just reminders, more advanced preparedness tips require installation or repairs. To guarantee that you cover all bases, here are the things you need to do.
Reverse Your Ceiling Fans
Check the functions of your ceiling fan and see if it has a reverse feature. This will spin the blades in the other direction. Fans with an Energy Star indicate that reversing its spin will create an updraft. Because of this, hot air will be pushed downwards and provide warmth to the entire room. If the room has a high ceiling with a fan installed, you can lessen the need for a heating system, which is a great energy-saver.
Install a Furnace
Perhaps one of the most important things your home should not miss out on, especially during the winter system, is a furnace. This home installation uses various fuel types such as gasoline or coal and can be used to heat up an entire building. Looking for furnace installation services as early as spring will help prepare your home for the coldness of winter.
Ice Dam Prevention
One of the leading causes of home damage caused by winter are icicles or ice dams. They can be quite heavy for your roof’s gutters, and worse, melting ice dams can flow back into your home and destroy some of your water pipes. Preventing ice dams from building up is very important in keeping your home safe. Finding air leaks or areas where there is not enough insulation is essential to prevent ice buildup.
Roof Inspection
If you’ve been postponing the menial but important task of inspecting your roof, a few months or weeks before the winter comes is the best place to do so. Ensure that there aren’t holes, damages, or missing shingles from your roof that may cause melted ice to leak inside. What’s worse is that water can get inside your walls, which further leads to structural damage. Removing any debris that may have landed on your roof is also important to reduce the weight it needs to withstand.
Check the Gaps in Doors and Windows
Any gaps that may be residing between your doors or windows must also be sealed shut. Otherwise, the cold breeze can get inside your home, rendering your heating system useless. It might even cause parts of your home that use water to freeze. Ensure that you have a silicone caulk at home to seal these gaps and maintain your home’s warmth.
Clean Gutters
Having lots of debris in your roof’s gutters can also result in clogging. When this happens, melted ice will not pass through and proceed to the proper drainage pathway. Instead, water will back up and flow into your home. This causes ice dams and icicles as well. In preparation for the winter, make sure that you also include cleaning the gutters on your checklist when you check your roof for damages.
Pipe Extensions
Having too much ice around and on top of your home can damage its structure. That’s why it’s essential that you use pipe extensions that can reach up to four or five feet away from your home. This guarantees that your home’s structure is safe from the heavyweight of snow or too much water running in your pipes.
Turn Off Faucets Outside the House
The extreme cold that comes with winter can cause any water storage to freeze, and if you think you’ve checked everything, keep in mind that faucets have water left in their pipes as well. When the water inside these pipes freezes, the expansion of ice can cause it to burst, which eventually leads to water leakage. Ensure that you disconnect all garden hoses and drain the water that might have been left in the faucet. This is important, especially if you don’t have frost-proof faucets.
We all want our homes and families to be safe during the winter, which means that we should be prepared for the harshness that this type of weather brings. Knowing what to do to prevent harm or damage from happening to your home and family is essential for winter-preparedness.
