When you see college football outdoors, you know that winter is near. You’d have to prepare for the cold, and the first thing you’ll do is buy some new winter clothes. After that, think about how you’d want to protect your home from the cold season. There are a lot of tips on how to winterize your home online.
Most homeowners think that preparing for winter would cost a lot. There are many ways to quickly and cost-efficiently save money and keep the heat inside your home. One way is by adding new insulation in your attic, ceilings, basements, and walls. This saves you warmth and cozy in your home and wouldn’t spike up your heating bill for this season.
Good Time for an Insurance Check-up
Here at AIS, we help our clients find the best value insurance coverage for their needs. . As you winterize your home, you also want to ensure that you’re covered for winter-related home damage. Winter can be harsh weather that causes pipes to burst and water damage from ice dams. This is also to make sure that you know your updated insurance policy. A review of your home insurance policy assures you that every change you are about to make is covered.
Part of winterizing your home is protected. Here’s a guide to ensure home safety: Holiday Home Safety Tips 2023
Benefits of Preparing For Winter
Winterizing your home seems like a tedious and expensive task. You would rather spend your money elsewhere while relaxing than installing heat systems in your home. Preparing for winter is just a small price to pay for the things that could happen in the future. Let’s start to winterize our home.
Health
Protecting your home from the cold means that you are protecting those inside your home, too. Prolonged exposure to cold weather could cause health issues such as frostbite or hypothermia to your or your loved ones.
Home Structure
It pays to keep the snow, ice, or buildup away from your roof during this season. These could result in your gutter falling off, the walls of your house cracked, or grow molds in the foundation of your house. Your home should be a place where you are safe. Everything you own and love is inside it. Making sure that it withstands any weather means that you are protecting your house and everything and everyone inside it.
Savings
The preparations you’ll need to winterize your home are only a one-time payment. Compared to having your house repaired from time to time because of winter, buying the equipment to protect it is way cheaper. You can think of this as a long-term investment in your home. You’d get to avoid costly repair fees, maintenance fees, and hospital bills.
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Prepare For Winter
Now that you have decided to prepare your home for the winter, the first thing that you should have is an emergency kit. You must place your emergency kit at an accessible part of your house to winterize your home, as this would include:
- Water
- Flashlights
- Batteries
- First Aid Kit
- Whistles used to ask for help
- Basic Tools
- Manual Can Opener
- Small Supply of Food
- Radio
- Candles
- Lighter
- Blankets
- Ropes
Make sure you have all of these ready in case something happens during winter. Power outages are common during winter, so the equipment in your emergency kit will come in handy.
Winter Checklist
As a responsible homeowner, mark everything on this checklist to prepare for the winter. Sticking to this list would reward you with a hassle-free and relaxed winter experience. Plus, you wouldn’t have to worry about bills of any kind. Here are some tips to winterize your home:
Reverse Your Ceiling Fans
Reversing the ceiling fans would pull out the warm air from the ceiling, then spread it throughout the occupied spaces in the room.
Inspect the Furnace and Replace the Filters
By inspecting your furnace, you can ensure that it will give you warmth during the winter. Checking it beforehand saves you much time instead of finding out it is already faulty when you need it badly. Changing your furnace filters would also help prevent allergies during the winter. A new and clean filter would maximize the efficiency of your heating system. At the same time, purify the air going around in your home.
Insulate Water Pipes
The benefit of insulating your water pipe is to prevent flooding in your home. Frozen water pipes tend to burst to cause more damage to your house and its structure. It would take months to clean up the damage and restore the home after this happened. So, insulating your house’s water pipes would come a long way. There are several ways you could insulate water pipes. The most common and easiest way is to use strips of pipe wrap or foam pipe sleeves. This is needed to winterize your home.
Don’t freak out. We’re here to help. We’ll find the best insurance coverage for whatever life throws at you at Advantage Insurance Solutions. Give us a call at (877) 658-2472 today to get started!
Turn Off Outdoor Water and Sprinklers
If you have an irrigation system in your home, review the owner’s manual to know the best steps in preparing the water system. It is essential to turn off outside water and sprinklers during the time of winter. If the excess water or leftover waterfalls on the pipe freezes, it might crack the pipe. A small crack in the water pipe can damage the whole irrigation system. Repairing or buying a new system would cost a lot, so turning it off during winter is less than that.
Clean Your Wood Stoves and Chimneys
As part of your home’s heating system, you might regularly use your wood stoves and chimneys. As the years go by, these heating systems’ efficiency goes down. An inefficient chimney and wood stove make the heating bill costly and threaten a chimney fire. So it is crucial to clean the wood stoves and chimneys as it would reduce the cost of your heating bill and protect your home.
Install Window Insulators
Window insulators would keep the warmth inside your home and prevent it from spreading outside. It would also prevent cold winter air out from getting inside your home. Window insulators are one of the cheapest parts of a house’s heating system. One could use various materials such as insulation films and magnetic insulation for windows. If you are in a bind, you can use bubble wrap on your window or a thermal curtain during the winter.
Preparing Winter Tools
Store away your summer tools! It’s time to pull out the winter tools such as snow blowers, shovels, and ice scrapers. Better place them somewhere accessible and near where you would most likely use them. Having them within reach would save you time exposed to the cold and make your way to the snow.
Invest in a Programmable Thermostat
We are now in the digital age. Innovators are working hard to make our daily lives more convenient. A programmable thermostat is a worthy investment for the winter. It is a tool that adjusts the temperature in the room at a specific pre-set schedule. In this way, your heating system will only run over time if you are in the room. The thermostat will automatically turn off depending on when you’ve set it off.
Make Necessary Repairs and Adjustments
You can perform a short inspection of your home. Take note of your house’s sidings. Repair or replace anything that seems to be falling. Not getting it fixed could injure people around your house if it falls off your sidings.
Making necessary fixes and safety precautions for this season is essential.
Here’s a good read on protecting your home and family this holiday season.
A Holiday Heist: Burglars and Your Home Insurance
Stock up on Emergency Supplies
As a part of your emergency kit, you should always have water and food. Power outages are common during winter. People will need help replenishing their essential goods if this happens. Ensure you have enough emergency food and your basic needs during winter.
Provide an Outside Air Supply
The air supply would be for your combustion appliances. Have a professional take a look at your gas stove and furnaces so that they can make the necessary arrangements for the needed air supply.
Take Care of Your Vehicles
Your vehicles are just as important as your home. You would need it to go out if you ever need something from the store, or you’d need to go somewhere during winter. Make sure that it receives the same care and protection as your house.
Seal Cracks Wherever in Your House
Protecting the structure of your home from the wet season and cold temperatures. Sealing the cracks in windows, doors, and other parts of your home would strengthen the foundation of some parts of your home. A small crack can turn into something big if left unattended.
Replace Batteries in Smoke Detectors
The temperature drops during winter. It is also a fact that batteries and temperature are related. The smoke detector could go off even without smoke when it’s cold. False alarms like these are because a drop in the temperature would give the battery a hard time working. Hence, causing a false alarm and panic in your home during a supposedly relaxed winter night.
Clean the Gutters
Have your gutters cleaned by a professional, or clean them on your own before the winter. The snow and ice would make it harder to clean when the winter comes. Have a merry spring cleaning before the winter!
A good read for prepping this winter season 2023 to 2024. Do I Need to Prepare for Winter Driving?
Add Insulation Where It Is Needed
During your regular home inspection, you could add in a little insulation check to determine whether you need to add more insulation and where. Make sure to note what type of insulation you already have before adding more insulation to your home.
Check for Leaks
Your gutters, windows, and roofs are the most common areas to have leaks. It is essential to check these areas for leaks before winter. Freezing water and low temperature could add pressure to the water pipes causing them to crack. If the water pipe already has a crack, the cold season could damage it further. Allowing this to happen would be costly to repair or replace.
Trim Shrubs Around Your Home
Shrubs and trees can hold a specific weight of snow. Make sure to trim those branches near your home to prevent snowfall accidents – for you or your vehicle. You wouldn’t want to scoop another pile of snow off your car or home, right?
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We are here to help!
Adding a heating system and ensuring the pipes to your home don’t freeze can be tedious. Doing so is meant to protect the structural integrity of your home. We hope we have helped you with how to winterize your home. In turn, Advantage Insurance Solutions aims to protect you and your home so that it shouldn’t be something that you have to worry about in the future. The right insurance coverage keeps your family safe and secures this coming Winter Season.
For a free quote with a Team AIS expert, contact us at (877) 658-2472 today!