Winterizing Your Home and Your Vehicle

Days are getting shorter and shorter. Nights are becoming longer and cooler. That means the summer is about over. That also means that cold weather, holiday season, and winter are coming. Relatives will be coming over for holiday festivities. Children will be running around, eating… spilling… jumping on furniture… breaking things. Yeah… actually, that is for you to think about. I will talk about preparing for the winter. September is the perfect time to do that, since the weather is still comfortable. 

Winterizing Your Home 

During winter, one of the top priorities is to keep the cold out and the warmth inside of your home. Insulating your home properly will not only keep you warm, but also will keep your heating costs to a minimum. Homes that are improperly insulated may cost homeowners 10% to 15% on the dollar. Good place to start is with your windows and doors. If you feel that significant draft is coming from your windows, you should consider replacing them. New window models are significantly more energy efficient. Yes, replacing windows might be costly. However, this home improvement will pay for itself in energy savings, within just a few months. If window replacement is not a possibility for you, consider installing clear sheets of plastic in your windows. That solution is inexpensive and relatively simple, but it will be effective in shielding you from cold and wind. 

You should check your home for doors that lead to outdoors and have draft, especially on the bottom of the door. Doors that are poorly sealed are a major cause of heat loss in the average home. Metal or wooden draft stoppers can be purchased at almost any home improvement store. Stoppers can easily be glued or screwed to the bottom of doors. To seal the rest of the door, weather stripping can be used. Of course, if your budget allows, you should replace doors that have a large amount of draft. If you were to take all the draft points of all the doors that lead from your home to outside and put them all together, you would have a hole that is at least a foot in diameter.