Halloween Means Leftover Candy, Time to Winterize Your Home

It’s that dreaded day of the year…the day after Halloween when all of the leftover candy is saying, “Eat me!”, but your waist line is telling you to throw all of the candy away. I feel your pain. But it’s also the day when you should winterize your home.

Much like your waist line is telling you to throw away the candy, your pocket book is telling you to follow these steps in order to avoid thousands of dollars of unwanted (and unnecessary) repair bills in the near future…

1. Winterize your hose bibs. It takes about 5 minutes (literally). Turn the water off to all of your exterior hose bibs by turning the valves inside of your home to the off position. Go outside and turn the valves to the on position on all of your exterior hose bibs so the water drains out of them. And don’t forget to disconnect your garden hoses from the hose bibs and put them in your garage. This helps guard against pipes bursting which can lead to thousands of dollars in repair bills.
2. Have your heating system inspected to make sure it’s working correctly. Better to find out you need something repaired now than in the middle of winter.
3. Clean your gutters. As soon as the all of the trees around your house are without leaves, get it done. Gutter with leaves still in them in the winter can lead to poor drainage, basement leaks and gutters falling off your roof thanks to water which has been trapped by the leaves turning into much heavier ice.
4. Adjust your ducts. In the summer, you want the vents in the upper parts of your home wide open and the ducts in the lower parts of your home slightly open or even closed because cold air falls. In the winter, you want the ducts in the lower parts of your home wide open and the ducts in the upper parts of your home slightly open or even closed because hot air rises.
5. Reverse your fans. In the summer, you want your fans “pulling” the cold air up. In the winter, you want your fans “pushing” the hot air down.
6. Check your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Make sure they work. If your alarms use batteries, now may be a good time to change out the batteries for a set of new ones. Better safe than sorry.
7. Have your chimney inspected especially if you use your fireplace. You’d be surprised to find out what made it into your chimney since the last time you had it checked. I’ve heard of birds, squirrels, tennis balls…and the list goes on. Anything in your chimney that shouldn’t be there is a fire risk.
8. Think about getting a humidifier especially if you have hardwood floors. Hardwood expands and contracts as the temperature and level of humidity rises and drops. After several years of the hardwood expanding and contracting, you will start to see gaps and possibly even cracks in your hardwood. The winter months and your heating system lead to low humidity levels which is not good for your hardwood. If you have lots of hardwood, think about getting a complete house system which is installed directly into your heating system. If you have hardwood in only one or just a few rooms, think about getting a small, stand-alone humidifier for those areas.
9. Get a battery back up for your sump pump. Nothing worse than having your power go out due to a bad snow or ice storm and them watching your basement flood as the snow/ice melts because your sump pump isn’t working. You can either get a separate sump pump with a built in battery back-up or just a battery back up which goes in between your existing sump pump and the wall outlet. If you’re not the electronics/handyman type, don’t worry…there is plenty of info on the subject (click here for an example).
10. Get your shovel and salt ready now. Don’t be like most people who run to Home Depot or Lowe’s after the snow has already started to fall. By having both ready now, you’ll avoid the day-of-the-snow full parking lots, long check-out lines and then hearing, “sorry, we don’t have any more shovels or salt in stock”.