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12 Tips for Preparing Your Home for Winter

It won’t be long before winter is here, which means colder days and an increase in heating costs to keep your home warm. While it can be difficult to predict how mild or severe it will be this winter, there are several things you can to help prepare your home. Doing these things now, will help save on heating costs later and could even reduce your energy bills this winter!
craftsman insulating a wall
  1. Top off your attic insulation. Most attics are under-insulated and do not have a sufficient barrier of protect to keep out the cold. Increasing the amount of insulation in your attic will keep out more cold air, but also keep more warm air inside your home.
  2. Make sure your attic is properly ventilated. Proper attic ventilation is necessary to ensure proper air flow and keep moisture out of the attic.
  3. Increase the insulation in your basement. The basement is typically cooler in the winter and with more insulation, it won’t cost as much to heat this area of the home.
  4. Install a door sweep on the bottom of doors. On the interior side of exterior doors, adding a door sweep will block out cold air drafts from getting into the home.
  5. Install weather stripping to seal up air leaks in door frames. If you can see sunlight coming in from around your exterior doors, they are not sealed. Adding weather stripping will help seal the doors and keep cold air out.
  6. Install caulking or weather stripping around windows. You will want to make sure there are no cold air leaks around windows too.
  7. Use window coverings to block out the cold. While blinds do help stop some cold from getting inside, you can block out more with honeycomb blinds, thick drapes, and thick curtain.
  8. Use natural sunlight to help heat the home. On any windows that get direct sunlight in the winter, open the blinds or drapes and allow the sun to help heat up the room.
  9. Get better insulation windows installed. If your home is older, you could decrease heating costs with new windows for your home.
  10. Remember to close the damper when not using your fireplace or stove. Once the fire has cooled down and burned out, close the damper. Leaving it open allows cold air to get into the home.
  11. Install a programmable thermostat. You can program the thermostat to keep your home a few degrees cooler during the day when no one is home to save some on your heating costs.
  12. Set ceiling fans to their winter direction. Make sure all fans are spinning in a clockwise direction and only run fans on a low speed. This will help draw up cool air and push hot air trapped on the ceiling down.

For further details on improving the insulation in your attic and basement or to fix problems with your attic ventilation, please feel free to contact Logik Roofing at (905) 424-7469 today!