staff One part of getting your home ready for the winter is to make sure that your roof is ready. If your gutters are in very bad shape, then that might necessitate replacement gutters. Then you need to hire someone to do a gutter installation for you. This is just one part of the whole process, though. Here are some other things that you can do, too:
Insulate Your Pipes
While North Carolina might not get some of the consistently frigid temperatures that some of the states up north do, it can still get plenty cold sometimes. You don’t want to wake up one morning and find that your pipes froze overnight. This can lead to no running water and even some burst pipes. Avoid that risk by getting your pipes insulated.
Seal Up Any Cracks
This is an important part of keeping your house warm during those winter nights when the temperatures drop. If there are cracks in your house, that’s going to let cold air in. As a result, your heater’s going to have to work twice as hard as it should. Not only will the inside of your place not be as toasty as it should, your energy bills are going to be higher since your heater has to do all that extra work. Save yourself the extra money that you’d be paying and get those cracks sealed up.
Have Your Heating Systems Inspected
You’re going to be relying on these to keep you warm all throughout the winter. That means that you want to make sure that they are going to be up to the task. Have a professional come inspect the furnace or other heating systems that you have and make sure that there are no issues that could lead to it suddenly stopping working at the very worst time. It’s a safety precaution well worth taking.
Make Sure Your Detectors Are Working
Since you’re going to be inside the bulk of the time during the winter, along with having the windows shut, you’re going to want to make sure that your home is protected. You can do that by having both smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.
You’re going to be running the heat often, so you want to make sure that something can alert you if anything catches fire. If anything in your furnace’s duct system gets back up, then you run the risk of carbon monoxide filling your home — this is deadly since it’s odorless. If your detector alerts you, then open a window, or if you have a sudden headache and feel sleepy. In either case, get out of the house and let professionals inspect it.
There are several other things that you can do. They include tending to your trees to ensure that there are no dead branches that can fall and do damage to your home or even yourselves, and draining your hose to make sure there’s no water in it and then stowing it away.
When you complete all of these steps, you will be ensuring that you have a much better chance of enjoying the winter months in a cozy home. It may take a bit of time and effort, but it will be worth it. Then you can just sit and relax on those cold days and nights while you wait for the upcoming spring season.
