4 Cold Weather Tips for Winter

Fall is right around the corner, and preparing early with these cold weather tips can help you prevent avoidable damage to your home, while also giving you peace of mind.

Cold weather can come quickly, and if you delay getting your home ready you may put yourself at risk for expensive heating costs and other winter disasters.

1. Prevent Ice Dams

An ice dam is a layer of ice that forms at the edge of a roof and traps melted snow above it, this can lead to water damage in many areas of your home. An important part of preventing ice dams is to clear out your gutters in the late summer/ early fall so that water can drain off the roof.

You will also want to seal any areas in which warm air may leak out from your home into your attic, including chimneys, vent pipes and light fixtures.

Ice dams are caused by heat loss from your home, so the best way to prevent them is to prevent heat transmission through your attic with proper cellulose insulation.

2. Protect your Pipes

Frozen water trapped in pipes during extremely cold weather can cause them to crack or burst as the water expands, so a simple way to prevent this is to keep your faucets dripping just slightly with warm water.

You can also drain your outdoor faucets and disconnect outdoor hoses to prevent the cold from damaging them.

3. Seal Areas you may Lose Warm Air

If you feel cold drafts around your windows (and sometimes even when you don’t), you are losing heat through them, which is costing you extra money.

To avoid as much heat loss as possible during the colder months, dig out the old caulking with a screwdriver, then clean it and use caulk to reseal cracks or openings around windows, and install weather stripping around doors when you can.

Doing these simple cold weather tips can majorly help you save on energy consumption.

4. Insulate Properly

One of the most important things you can do to keep warm this fall is to add cellulose insulation to your attic to halt air infiltration, this helps your heating system expend less energy and it can save you on energy consumption.

Cellulose’s high density helps it to inhibit the movement of air through it; it’s especially useful to use around gaps in electrical wiring and plumbing.