Bryan Hunsberger
Winterize: Perhaps the Most Important Home Winterization Article You Will Ever Read
It’s gonna get cold out there! If it’s your 1st or 40th winter, I’m sure you’ll find some gold in the following home winterization checklist.
1 – Flush Sprinklers: The Right Way
As temperatures plunge, things start to freeze, and that includes the water sitting in your underground sprinkler pipes. As that water expands, it can burst your sprinkler pipes.
If you own an air compressor, you’ll want to watch a YouTube video or two to familiarize yourself with the blowing out process; otherwise hire a lawn care company to do this for you. It can be beneficial to leave your valves partially open to avoid damage to the backflow preventer.
2 – Change Your Filter
Nothing surprising here, but I bet you haven’t changed your filter in a while. The hypo-allergenic filters can interfere with airflow and will particularly become troublesome in the summer. Following the recommendation of our HVAC company, in our house we skip those and go with the cheap filters. Our highly allergic son hasn’t noticed a difference, but we noticed a large difference in the air flow.
3 – Turn on the Humidifier
If you live north of I-70 in the U.S., you really ought to have a whole home humidifier installed on your furnace. They aren’t expensive, are good for family health and are an important home investment. Maintaining a consistent humidity in your home is good for everything from framing to flooring to windows. Try to maintain an average Relative Humidity (RH) of 35%.
On your HVAC system, you’ll need to open the vent damper (usually is labeled “summer” or “winter”), turn on, or change the dial from 0 or “off” to a numeric setting. If your controller has percentage numbers, put it at 35, otherwise the low side of normal is good.
Why the low side of normal? Well, that’s a long story. The key point being to maintain humidity while not damaging your windows. If temperatures get particularly cold and you see moisture or worse, ice, on your windows, turn that humidity down until things warm up a little more outside. Read a little more on this topic here.
4 – Fans Up
Depending on your home and the HVAC situation, there are a couple things you can do to avoid all the heat in your home pooling at the top of the top floor. First is to ensure your fans are turning clockwise in the winter. Having trouble visualizing that? Just ensure the fan is pulling air up. This pulls cold air up, heating it up from the natural collection of warm air which rises, and redistributes it throughout the room without you feeling a draft. Read more about that from a nice article created by Delmar fans. Dust the fan blades while you’re up there.
5 – Vent Distribution
Big caveat on this one: it is non-scientific and more anecdotal by the home. The folks who installed your forced air HVAC system may or may not have been top shelf. If you are severely struggling with temperature discrepencies in your home with all the vents in the house open, you can try this possible solution.
Usually in the HVAC stack, there is a duct that goes directly to the top floor with no stops on other floors. Close this. Leave all other vents in the house open. The hot air in the home will travel up normally, however, it’s unlikely that the top floor will be as warm as lower floors. That’s usually preferred, since you’re usually just sleeping on the top floors. Be careful! If it’s too cold, during extremely cold nights, if you have enclosed pipes on exterior walls etc, you could get into some trouble. Adapt this for your home.
6 – Get Ready for Snow
Get those shovels out of the attic, service the snow blower and buy some sidewalk safe salt. If you have kids, get the sleds down and make sure you have all your winter clothes ready.
In our home, every kid has their own winter clothes and they are supposed to keep their primaries in their room. Then we have pullout wicker shelf baskets with the rest. The one morning when school’s cancelled and you want to shovel and kids are wanting to play can be pretty stressful if you’re digging around the basement for everyone’s boots. Oh yeah, that reminds me: the kids’ boots don’t fit anymore. Just a heads up.
7 – Cut the Grass a Little Shorter and Aerate the Lawn
This is probably out of order from “Get Ready for Snow.” You should do this while you are still able to water the grass for another month, but temperatures are cooler for grass to thrive. You aerate lawns and overseed to promote root depth and promote a healthy thick lawn. This is usually done in the fall since the grass can take during it’s best time of the year.
8 – Blow Leaves into the Downwind Neighbor’s Lawn in the middle of the night.
You didn’t read that here, ok? With the extra time, get ahead on your fantasy football research.
9 – Christmas Lights Go Up the Day After Halloween
This isn’t really up for debate, which is why commenting isn’t activated on this site. The sooner you set up lights, the warmer it is outside, the longer you get to enjoy them, the more attention you’re likely to receive from neighbors and the more enjoyment you derive from having the Holiday Spirit. Listen, Christmas can’t come too soon and end too late during a cold, miserable Nebraska winter.
10 – Cover Patio Furniture or Bring it Inside
Usually patio furniture is “weather proof” but it will still age with the seasons. Extend the life of your outdoor furniture by covering it or bringing it inside.
11 – Prepare Your House for Spring Sale by Calling Jamie Hunsberger
Spring is a great time to move and it’s never too soon to start planning and talking to the most friendly and proficient realtor in Omaha. Call Jamie Hunsberger to prepare your home for sale.
