With the weather finally starting to cool off, are you looking for the best ways to winterize your home? Sure, you may love the crisp days of autumn and the smell of fallen leaves but winter will be here soon. While I live in the relatively mild south right now, I grew up in New England. I know a thing or two about cold weather. I know what it feels like to walk outside and have the inside of your nose freeze because it is so darn cold out. I know what it’s like to get out of bed and put your feet down on a freezing cold floor when you can’t find your slippers. And even here in Georgia, we get some pretty horrible ice storms. After losing power for 3 days with a newborn in January many years ago, I starting searching for tips on winterizing homes so we would never be left that cold again! Here are a few tips for winterizing your home that might help you save money and reduce your carbon footprint this winter. I will share a few affiliate links in the post below for products that may help.
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Best Ways to Winterize Your Home
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Take a closer look at your windows
I love a home with a lot of big, bright windows. However, windows can be a large source of heat loss in a home. Your best bet for long-term savings is to replace single pane, poorly made windows with modern, double pane varieties. While it is a relatively large expense when it comes to your home improvement budget, you will save a ton of money in the long term. If you can’t afford to replace your windows, consider investing in a window insulator kit. This allows you to keep the heat inside while still having a beautiful view. You can also add additional weatherstripping for windows to help keep out drafts.
Keep up on Furnace Maintenance
A furnace that is never serviced and who’s filter is clogged will not be running at peak efficiency. Get your furnace looked at by professionals once every season before you start using it for the first time. I love this Black & Decker home maintenance log book to keep track of all your home maintenance chores!
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Install a ceiling fan
You might think that ceiling fans are for summer but they also are a huge help in winter as well. Heat naturally rises and ends up near your ceiling. While YOU are sitting in your chair on the ground freezing your butt off. Install a ceiling fan and make sure it moves in a clockwise direction so it pushes hot air trapped up on the ceiling towards the floor.
Check your foundation
Your home’s foundation takes quite a beating when it comes to snow, ice and rain. Make sure your foundation is free from cracks and that there is no water pooling around the house. Freezing water is incredibly strong and can cause small cracks to become much larger. Hire a professional or buy some foundation sealant to protect your foundation from the harsh weather of winter.
Seal out drafts
Cold air leaking in and hot air leaking out will cost you a fortune this winter. Seal cracks around windows with window caulking. Place draft stoppers under all the exterior doors. Close the flue in your chimney and take a closer look at areas where pipes come into your home. Some repairs may require a professional but there are a lot of DIY home repairs that you can do on your own to help seal out drafts.
Know what you are spending
One of the best ways to winterize your home is to actually know what you are spending. YOU the human are the biggest problem when it comes to energy usage. Cranking the heat up a few degrees because you are cold? Not a smart choice. Start saving money with an energy monitor. This little device shows household electrical usage in real time and projects your monthly bill. Research has shown that knowing this info leads consumers to reduce their electricity consumption significantly.
There are a lot of ways to cut home energy usage in the winter, however just changing your own behavior will help quite a bit. Even if you know the best ways to winterize your home, you will still spend a ton of money if you walk around in t-shirts and crank up the heat all day. Put on a sweater and some fuzzy slippers instead of turning up the heat. Check out my post about winter energy saving tips for more ways to save.
Have any other tips for winterizing homes?
Want more energy saving tips for winter? Try these!
Diane is a professional blogger and nationally certified pharmacy technician at Good Pill Pharmacy. She earned her BS in Microbiology at the University of New Hampshire and has worked in cancer research, academics, and biotechnology. Concern over the growing incidence of human disease and the birth of her children led her to begin living a more natural life. She quickly realized that the information she was learning along the way could be beneficial to many others and started blogging and freelance writing to share this knowledge with others. Learn more about her HERE.
It is amazing what a difference in your utilities winterizing can make! Love these tips, i know windows in my house are a culprit.
Just seeing that snow covered house makes me cringe at this point. But I live in Minnesota, so I know that is coming! We’ve done a lot to winterize our home over the years, but there’s always more to do. Thanks for the reminder….I think! 🙂
Oh man. NEVER neglect your furnace. My mom let her furnace go for too long without being serviced, and she ended up with no heat for 18 hours in the dead of winter.
That’s not good! It always seems to go at the worst possible time!
These are great tips and reminders. We need to get our furnace serviced now that it is getting colder. We want to make sure it is running efficiently before we turn it on for the fall and winter.
Omg this is awesome tips!! We live in az so no need really but lots a friends and family in cold.
What super easy and neat ideas on how to winterize your home for sure! I will have to start thinking about these ideas and actually doing them before too long. Winter is sneaking up on us!