Winterize Your Home & Outdoor Buildings

Simple, Cost-Saving Tips on Winterizing Your Home & Outdoor Buildings

We are fast approaching winter the season that delivers snow, ice, wind, and a lot of rain. Winter weather elements can cause damage to our home and your outdoor buildings if you aren’t prepared. We are sharing some simple, easy, and cost-saving tips on how to winterize your home and outdoor buildings that will save you money this year.

Many of the winterizing tips we share with you can be accomplished in a few hours and the largest project could be done in a weekend. Many of you are great DIY builders, so nearly all our suggestions you can do yourself and save money over jobbing out the tasks. Make a winterizing list and delegate to everyone in your family to pitch in and help. Many of our tips pertain to homes only, but there are a few listed below that also help winterize outdoor buildings including chicken coops.

Getting Winter-Ready Saves You Money

The benefits of winterizing your home and outdoor buildings are many. All of the winterizing tips we share help you take care of your most important investment, your family home, and help maintain its value. The added benefit of many of these suggestions is the money you save on your utility bills each month and also not needing emergency repairs. Emergency repairs happen at some of the most inconvenient times and usually hit your budget hard.

Protect Your Home Investment with Winterizing Tips

Below you will find a list of winterizing tips that can be performed on your home or your outdoor buildings. Many of these suggestions we have put on our list for the season or have already checked it off our list this year.

• How is your heating system? Depending on what type of heating system you have, this is the time to replace filters or you may need to clean out the whole system. If you have a gas heating system and turn off the gas in the warmer months, now is the time to check the pilot light and make sure that everything starts up and runs well.
• Check your chimney for loose bricks or cracks in the stovepipe, if you have a wood heating stove. If you are agile, the cost of a chimney brush and extension is very inexpensive and the cleaning of your stove pipe can be done quickly. Each year you should make sure that the fire bricks in a fireplace or heating stove or in good shape, that the gasket around the heating stove closure still fits well. If there are gaps in your stove door insulation, it is easy to replace and will make your stove much more efficient. If you don’t want to do the task yourself have a chimney sweep come and clean your chimney, fireplace, or stove.
• Winterize your chicken coop with fiberglass house wrap. You can cut the wrap to size and it will help insulate your chicken coop from the outside and help keep a more contact temperature for your chickens.
• Now is the time to check batteries on all smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. I know that most of our detectors have warning chimes, but you shouldn’t rely on those, each of these devices has a self-check button. Be sure each room has a smoke detector and that each hallway outside of a bedroom has a carbon monoxide detector. It is also good to have one installed in both your kitchen and living room.
• Be sure to disconnect your garden hose from the outside faucet and store it for the winter. Any water left in a hose can cause it to freeze and then your hose needs to be replaced.
• It’s time to insulate all outdoor above-ground pipes. I buy insulation wrap specially made for pipes, so it already has a slit and I use Guerilla tape to secure the wrap in place on all my pipes.
• Test your basement sump pump to make sure it is operational. If you live in a more temperate climate be sure to have a portable submersible utility pump available and in good working order. We use ours for our pool when the out-take hose can’t keep up with rainfall and we pump water out of our pool so it doesn’t overflow. I can’t tell you how many times for so many uses this portable pump has come in handy.
• This solution makes a great holiday gift, mud trays for boots, and also boot mats to scrub off snow, dirt, from entering your home. We use these outside our doors and then we have a mat inside the door that absorbs water and deflects fur, which is great when you have dogs coming in out of your house.
• Another great holiday gift is a mitten dryer that you can place next to your fireplace or heating stove to dry out wet mittens.
• Caulking and weatherstripping are inexpensive compared to leaking double pane windows and the cost of replacement. Check each of your exterior windows for cracks in the caulking and replace weatherstripping where needed.
• Installing draft tape on the bottom of your exterior doors helps keep your home warmer and your utility bills lower.
• Check your roof for leaks and clean out all gutters. Gutter guards save so much time and trouble. Dirty gutters don’t allow your downspouts. Be sure to check roof flashing around chimneys and vents, these are prime places on your roof that can cause leaks over time.
• Winter is the time to reverse your ceiling fans so they move to air down into the room and you need to heat your home less.
• Investing in a stovetop fan for your wood heating stove makes a world of difference in how warm your home is while you use less wood in the long run.
• Protect your air conditioner from the elements with either a jacket or a simple piece of plywood held down with bricks or strapping to keep your air conditioner in good condition for next summer.
• Buy a humidifier or combination humidifier and air cleaner to keep your home more virus-free. It’s important to keep indoor air humidity above 30% and below 50%. Keeping your air humidity above 43% helps deter viruses and keeps your skin in better condition.
• Cut back tree limbs from your house so they don’t fall on your home in a storm. If removing large limbs or a tree it’s best to have a tree service do the job.
• Consider a backup generator or investing in solar with all the incentives that are available today. The cost of a well pump solar system is relatively inexpensive and keeps water coming to your home in a storm and during a power outage. If buying a portable generator, be sure to invest in an inverter generator for your appliances and computers, they need the steady electrical output that a regular generator doesn’t deliver.
• Before the snow, sleet and rain really start is a great time to cover your outdoor furniture. Make sure your outdoor furniture covers have breathing slits so your furniture doesn’t mildew.
• If you live in a high wind area, prior to storms be sure to take your plants off their plant movers, it’s amazing that a strong gust can topple a 20-gallon pot that probably weighs in access of 40 pounds and crack, but it does happen. Once the storm has passed you can put your plants back on their plant movers till the next storm.
• Stock up on salt or lime depending on where you live. Salt helps give you extra traction on walkways, stairs, and paved driveways. Salt for our customers that deal with snow and ice and lime for our customers that live in areas that get huge amounts of rain. Lime added to your driveway helps soak up excess moisture and hardens your gravel driveway after lots of rain.

A little bit of planning can go a long way to enjoying the winter months instead of being bogged down with emergency repairs that take time and hit your budget. Many of these tasks we have or are currently performing on our homes. If you need to replace windows or other shed hardware or shed doors on your outdoor buildings, look no further than Shed Windows and More for a great selection at amazing prices with the great customer service you rely on from our company.