How to Winterize Your Home

After all of the recent cold weather, I bet you’re thinking about how you can winterize your house and keep yourself warmer next year. I’m making my own list, and I’m also scheduled to help a few clients warm up their homes.

Here at home, one thing that I forgot to do was install a door sweep under the back door. With these temps, it makes for a wicked draft.  For now, we’ve been using towels and it makes a big difference.  Next Lowes trip: Door sweep.

It’s interesting to see how the door glass freezes up with a layer of ice, while the windows didn’t. It goes to show that some glass is more insulated than others. This door deserves a curtain in these temps.

This is a great time to check for drafts around doors, windows, outlets or pipes coming through the floor—just about anywhere you suspect a draft. Just put your hand over the suspect area to find out if it’s leaking air.

The gaps around this pipe and outlet are both likely places to find a chilly little draft.

I also noticed that my shower sputtered a little when I turned it on after the last cold night. The plumbing is in an outside wall. It has six inches of insulation, but if I had it to do over again, I’d seal that section with stiff foam insulation, seal it in with Great Stuff, then install the fluffy pink fiberglass roll insulation. For that matter, I would and still might build an access door for all those pipes, but I guess I’ll just wait until the need arises.

In the really cold weather, the hot water froze , but the cold still ran. I crawled around under the house in subzero temperatures found a tiny little gap, and filled it with more Great Stuff. All of the pipes are also well–insulated with wrap-around black foam insulation. The stuff is expensive, but it’s definitely necessary when your pipes are in an unheated crawlspace.

Unfortunately, the vents in my crawlspace are not well sealed at all. I guess I’ll start calling these lil’ solar vents with tin louvers “Florida vents.” I had planned to cut a chunk of stiff foam board and fit them into the openings, but it never got done. Maybe I’ll  look into cold weather vents.

Brrrrr! Don't shiver in the cold! Call your local Asheville handyman to help winterize your home.