5 ways to winterize your home
You are ready for the cold weather with sweaters and mittens, but is your house ready for the cold months ahead? Here are some easy ways to get your home ready for winter!
1. Clean gutters
Once leaves have fallen, remove them (and other debris) from your house’s gutters. This will help prevent clogging when it rains and snows this winter. Clogged drains can form ice dams, where water is backed up. These can cause water damage to your house.
2. Block leaks
One of the best ways to winterize your home is to simply block obvious leaks around your house, both inside and out.
To find the leaks walk around inside holding a lit incense stick to the most common draft areas: recessed lighting, window and door frames and electrical outlets. Door sweeps can close spaces under exterior doors, caulk or tacky rope can help with door and window frames. Outlet gaskets can be installed in electrical outlets that share a home’s outer walls which is where cold air often enters.
3. Get your ducts in a row Ducts aren’t always easy to see, but you can often find them exposed in the attic, the basement and crawlspaces. Repair places where pipes are pinched, which impedes flow of heated air to the house, and fix gaps with a metal-backed tape (duct tape actually doesn’t stand up to the job over time).Ducts also should be vacuumed once every few years, to clean out the abundant dust, animal hair and other gunk that can gather in them and cause respiratory problems.
4. Reverse fans
Reversing a ceiling fan is a small, yet effective tip that people don’t often consider. By reversing the direction from summer operation, the fan will push warm air downward and force it to recirculate. As you look upwards, the fan blades should be turning clockwise.
5. Check alarms
If you didn’t check the operation and change the batteries on your home’s smoke detectors at the fall time change, now is a great time to check. Detectors should be replaced every 10 years.
For more tips on how to get your house ready for winter, come by and see the experts at Action Equipment Rental and Sales. Stop by our showroom at at 1861 North Eastman Road, Kingsport, TN, call us at 423-246-5181, or check us out online at actionrentalkpt.com