Winter weather is coming—is your home ready? Cold temperatures can have a massive adverse effect on your home, so it’s important to do what you can now to slow or mitigate the damage that can happen later. While most people think preparing their home is a massive undertaking that will take a ton of time and effort, the truth is there are a lot of things you can do pretty easily—some in as little as a few minutes!
Here are some top tips for preparing your home for winter weather.
Check Your Weather Stripping
Weather stripping is small bits of material that function as seals or gaskets around your doors and windows. This material is designed to stop airflow and air leaks around the cracks that these features create, while also still allowing you to open and close them. Over time, this material wears out, develops cracks, or even rots away, creating air leaks that can cause you to lose a lot of the valuable heat you need (and pay for)!
Weather stripping can usually be purchased from any home improvement warehouse or hardware store, and replacing it doesn’t usually take all that long. In the span of a couple of hours or so, you can check every window in your home and even replace the worn-out stripping, which will make a tremendous difference on your heating bills.
Get a Furnace Maintenance Service
A furnace maintenance service service from an HVAC professional checks important components, tightens critical connections, lubricates moving parts, and even cleans your coils and other pieces of your furnace system to make sure it’s ready to provide you with much-needed heat. A well-maintained furnace is one that uses significantly less energy, which means you’ll save a bundle on your heating bills by getting this simple service from a Portland heating repairs team. Make sure to schedule one now so you don’t have to worry about fighting for an appointment during the peak season for furnace repairs!
Clean Your Rain Gutters
Yeah, it’s not always one of the most fun or glorious home chores, but your rain gutters are an immensely important part of your roof’s ability to repel water and carry it away from your home. Over time, your gutters will become clogged up with dirt, debris, leaves, sticks, mud, and loads of other stuff that prevents water from reaching the downspout and drain that takes it away. Cleaning the gutters out allows the water to reach the spout quickly and easily and prevents the water from being stuck in your gutters, where the weight can cause them to bend or even break off your eaves completely.
Look for Exposed Plumbing
Exposed plumbing is a huge threat for homeowners, especially metal plumbing. When the water inside your pipe freezes, it expands, and the expansion can cause leaks or even total pipe failure. When the water melts, you’re suddenly dealing with a massive flood of water causing major damage to your home or property. Stopping this is simple as well: pick up some plumbing insulation from your local home improvement store. It usually runs about a few cents per foot and is super easy to install on any exposed plumbing you have either outside your home or in rooms that have little insulation or climate control, like your garage.
Trim Away Tree Branches
If you have any tree branches that reach out and extend over your roof or important parts of your property, trim them back! Use a tree trimmer or hire a professional arborist to come to your home and trim the trees away so you don’t have to worry about frozen or dead branches potentially breaking off and falling into your roof. This important step could save you thousands on emergency roof repairs, especially if you have a tree on your property that’s either dead or not in the best of health.
Schedule a furnace maintenance service with the skilled Portland HVAC team at Roth Heating & Cooling, Plumbing, Electrical, Drain Services! Call us at (503) 266-1249 today.
