Winter can be a tough time for keeping your environment warm and healthy, so you must take extra care in doing what you can to protect both yourself and your home in this holiday season. It can be a challenge to remember what precautions you should take if the busyness of life is sweeping you away in the form of distractions, so allow this guide to be a reminder of what things you could do to take action this winter.
To find out more about what you can do, read on for further discussion and start living better today!
Insulating your windows
The windows are one of the prime places that heat is transferred from the interior of your house to the outside, making it important for you to target this area with insulation. Insulating your windows doesn’t have to be a complicated and expensive process. In fact, there are many DIY ways to provide cheap insulation for your home including applying shrink film to block airflow and using rope caulk to seal up holes and gaps in window frames. Weatherstripping can also be handy, using plastic or foam to seal up cracks in windows to prevent those crucial air leaks. Additionally, foam tubing can be inserted into tight spaces to seal drafts at the bottom of windows. All these simple techniques can be used to prepare your home for the winter to insulate your windows on a budget. To help in this area even more, perhaps consider choosing curtains that are thick, weighted, and lined can help keep each room warm and cosy.
Inspect your furnace and chimney
If you have a working fireplace in your home, it might be worth getting it inspected before winter hits to ensure that it is functioning properly. This inspection will examine the crucial parts of the chimney, fireplace, and roof, preventing any issues when it comes to lighting that first, cosy fire. After all, fireplaces are just one of the biggest causes of fires in the home, meaning you’ll want to do all you can to prevent disaster in the coldest season of the year. Having your furnace and chimney serviced will also attend to other needs such as preventing water leaks and keeping warmth-seeking animals out of the house.
Ensuring your heating system works
Heating systems are possibly the most crucial appliance you can have in your home in the cold, winter season. Therefore, this heating system must be fully functional, especially as it determines how comfortable your home is to live in. The majority of heating systems used in the home use gas, oil, or electricity. Hot water is pumped around each part of the home through pipes, reaching the radiator in each room. Heat is distributed through the particles in the air, warming each room in the interior. If your water is hard, limescale deposits may build up in the pipes. This can create blockages and decrease the efficiency of your household heating system. Therefore, water treatment to soften the water can be a good way to prevent issues with your heating in the long run, whether this is through chemical treatments or more eco-friendly physical treatments.
Bathroom
The bathroom can be a common room for burst pipes, with colder temperatures encouraging this. To prevent issues in this area and keep maintenance costs low from decreased repairs, invest in pipe insulation to help protect them in the colder months. You can insulate any exposed copper or PVC water pipe under your sink yourself at a small cost.
Trim tree branches
This one might not be thought of straight away, but large tree branches could cost you thousands in damage if they snap off a tree and fall onto your home. This can happen in branches that are weighed down by fallen snow or under the force of extreme winds. These branches could cause damage to your roof and windows, exposing your home to unwanted cold air as well as having the potential to injure a person if they are around at the time of the incident. Therefore, a simple and easy way to protect and prepare your home for winter is to trim the large, overhanging branches, costing nothing at all.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you will now have more of an idea of how to protect your home as the holiday season approaches. Winter can be hard at the best of times, so it’s time to start making easy efforts to put yourself in the best position for the coming cold temperatures today!
