5 Tips For Your Home Through The Winter

Things are getting really cold and windy. Snow is in the forecast. And here are some simple things that you should probably be doing to your house to get it winterized and get it prepped and ready for the spring.

TIP #1 is, now that it is winter, a lot of people wanna go and escape the cold, so they go on vacation and the most important thing to do while you are away is keep your heat on. And even better, if your house is on the market and it is vacant, you need to keep that heat on because if you don't, if we get some nights that are really really cold and gets in the 20s, it can be really bad for your house, it can freeze your pipes, it can explode them and it's just not gonna be good. This is also important for first impressions with buyers because, when somebody walks into a very cold house they're just not gonna be feeling good. They're just gonna probably start thinking, does the heat even work, does it hold in heat, a lot of bad things can happen from that.

Tip #2 is getting your furnace and fireplace serviced. Right now you're gonna be using that pretty much all the time. Contact your local HVAC inspector and have them come out. It's going to cost maybe $150 to $175 to get your furnace inspected and serviced. Maybe an additional $100 to $150 for your fireplace. Make sure everything is good and ready to go because when you're pumping heat all day long, you're gonna want to make sure nothing bad is gonna be happening to where it's gonna break down before it gets even colder. If we expect our winter like it was last year when we got into the teen degrees and we had a foot of snow, it's not gonna be so good if your furnace stops working or fireplace stops working. You got to make sure that it's all up to date.  It's gonna be easier to contact them now than it will be once it gets super cold out.

Tip #3 and #4 kind of tie in together. Make sure you just put away and cover up any of your hoses that are exposed outside, wrap them up, turn off the water and bleed out the water right now before it gets into the freezing temperatures. And then make sure you get those styrofoam blocks and put them in your ventilation right where it goes into the crawl space. That way the cold can stay out keeping your pipes nice and warm here through the wintertime underneath your house.

Tip #5 is, get all of your furniture, anything that you have outside and bring it inside. Bring your barbecue, bring your chairs, any lawn furniture. Get rid of that and put it inside your garage and just store it away. The last thing you want to do is have a nasty weather windstorm and then flying away. You're gonna miss pieces. It'll get rained on and then it'll just rust away. I would hate for you guys come the springtime to just buy a whole new set after you just bought it this year.