Preparing your home for winter ensures that you stay warm and comfortable no matter how low the temperatures fall. The time and effort that you spend to winterize your home can pay huge dividends, as far as conserving energy and reducing your utility bills, once the temperature begins dropping.

Here are a few important tasks that you can perform to winterize your home and prepare it to withstand cold days and nights:

• Have a professional HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) contractor inspect your furnace, to ensure that all of the components are working optimally and that there is no significant wear and tear. Consider signing up for a preventive maintenance plan, through which you’re guaranteed annual service visits from your HVAC contractor.
• Check your furnace filter every month during the heating season, and change it as often, or at least every six to eight weeks. Your furnace has to work harder to reach your desired temperature if the heated air is getting blocked by clogged filters.
• Inspect your ductwork for loose connections, holes in the metal, and a lack of insulation. You may need to have your HVAC contractor inspect those portions of your ductwork that you cannot access, such as those parts behind walls.
• Seal your doors and windows. Stop cold air from getting into your house by applying weatherstripping around exterior doors and caulking around windows.
• Prevent frozen pipes, which can lead to a large repair bill, by wrapping exposed pipes with foam rubber sleeves or fiberglass insulation.
• Keep your roof and gutters clear. Clean out any leaves or debris from your gutters to ensure that rain and melting snow can exit your roof quickly, to prevent moisture damage.
• Check your attic to see if it has enough insulation. If you can see the joists, add more. Additionally, you can check out the ZIP code insulation calculator to help determine if you need more.
• Clean your fireplace flue and make sure the damper operates properly. Make sure your fireplace has a cap to keep out birds or small animals.
• Install storm windows, which help keep your home warm. They work especially well on older single-pane windows.
• Check to ensure that your smoke-detector alarms are working properly, and don’t forget to change batteries at least once annually.

For more information about how to winterize your home and other issues related to home comfort, contact us at Power Heating & Air. We proudly serve the heating and cooling needs of the Atlanta metro area.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Peachtree, GA and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about winterizing and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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