7 Tips to Get Your Home Winter Ready

Fall is the perfect time to prepare your home for the coming cooler months.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when getting your home ready for the cold weather:

1. Winterize Your Home’s HVAC

Remove leaves and other debris that may have collected during the spring and summer – spraying it off with a garden hose is a quick way to do this. Wait for it to completely dry and then complete these steps:

- Open the electrical circuit lid

- Flip power switch to prevent A/C from self-starting

- Insulate exposed pipes to keep them from freezing

- Cover your unit with a painted piece of plywood and weigh it down with bricks.

- If you wrap it with plastic, it'll rust. 

2. Turn Your Furnace On

It’s important to fire up your furnace earlier than the first cold day, to let it slowly begin to heat up your home. You will also want to turn it on earlier to make sure that it’s still working properly.

Remember to keep your furnace on throughout the winter, even when you leave for vacation. This keep your pipes from freezing and bursting, but it will also save you money. Turning the furnace off completely will require a lot more energy to get it back up and running when you get home, and will take a while until your home feels warm again.

3. Check Your Fireplace & Chimney

The fireplace is a great way to have some extra heat in your home during the winter, and it’s also a fun way to make your home warm and cozy during a bleak winter day.

Check your chimney for debris and cracks. It is also a good idea to open and close the flue to make sure that it is opening and closing completely. This way you can make sure that smoke will be able to get out instead of coming into your home.

4. Winterize Pipes

Winterizing your pipes is one of the most important things on your winter checklist. If they’re not properly winterized they can freeze and burst, which you might not even find out about until spring when the frozen pipes begin to thaw.

A few tips to prevent frozen pipes:

- Shut off the outdoor water supply (hoses & faucets) and then drain them.

- Insulate pipes that aren’t indoors - insulation tubes made of polyethylene or fiberglass work best. 

5. Reverse Fans

This might seem strange, but if you have a ceiling fan for the summer you can use it in the winter to keep your home warm.

Since heat rises, you can change your fan from counter-clockwise to clockwise. Doing this makes warm air circulate down, and gently recycles the warm air. Just make sure to turn it on low, if it is on too high it won’t work!

6. Prepare Your Lawn for the Winter

Around October and November use a fertilizer with winterizer on your lawn. This fertilizer will seep in when it snows, so when springtime comes around your grass will have enough nutrients to come back in full force!

7. Check Your Water Heater

Checking your water heater to make sure it is working properly is something that you’ll want to do, that way you won’t be taking an ice-cold shower on a cold day!

However, something that is often forgotten is draining the sediment from the bottom of your hot water heater. Sediment builds up gradually and can break your water heater by clogging it. We recommend draining the sediment at least once a year. This will make your water heater last a lot longer!