Fighting off the winter chill can be a difficult task for many homeowners. The wintertime taxes your home’s heating system to its limits and then some. Many homeowners find that they have to conduct home repairs in order to beat the winter cold, but this doesn’t have to mean a major project that will cost you a lot of money out of pocket. With three simple tips, you can put yourself on track for a comfortable and cozy winter year after year.
1. Conduct routine maintenance on your home.
A leaky roof, damage to your home’s foundation, or pest damage from termites or even mold can cause long term devastation to your home’s energy efficiency and heating system efficacy. Conducting routine maintenance on your home and keeping with household repairs that you shouldn’t put off is the best way to stave off any large scale problems from developing in the first place. This means tackling roofing and gutters replacement as outlined by your contractor, maintaining your HVAC system or furnace, and working to keep attic and basement spaces clean and free of mold, leaks, and water damage.
The best way to keep you warm during chilly winters is to always maintain your home’s critical systems, and this often starts with the HVAC system. Your air conditioning unit can feel like the most important asset your home possesses in the dead of winter. It’s the only thing preventing you from relying on space heaters, blankets, and body heat to warm yourself or your home during this time of year. Keeping your air conditioning system functioning properly is something that homeowners quickly find is one of their priorities, but learning this lesson before you experience the cold weather of winter without this warmth is something that every homeowner should strive for.
2. Maintain strategic upgrades to your home.
Planning upgrades to windows and insulation elements within your home is a great way to improve the energy efficiency of your home. Windows provide a potent medium for heat to escape from your home’s interior space, providing the cold air with the warming effect that is meant for your living space. This is obviously a problem that strikes at the bottom line on your heating bill, but it creates a larger problem that is often left unseen. By leaving this weak point in your home’s defenses against the chill air, your air conditioner has to work that much harder to provide warm air to the interior space of your home. This places additional strain on the heating element and can lead to a much faster burnout on your unit altogether.
Strategic upgrades to doors and windows, as well as the addition of new insulation within walls and attic space, can help reduce this heat transfer out of your home and prevent the additional wear from taking its toll on your crucial heating system.
3. Keep yourself moving, and stay positive.
Wintertime is often a period of the year where cold days can lead to a blue mood. This is particularly true in this current time where the coronavirus pandemic has seen a retraction of indirect economic prosperity for consumers and savers across the globe and the lockdown measures that have affected millions–—if not billions—of us. Keeping yourself positive this winter, and every winter going forward, is a great way to improve upon your mood and your feeling of warmth during this tricky time of the year.
Getting exercise, playing games with your family, and remaining upbeat will go a long way to helping you to enjoy the wintertime the way it’s meant to be spent and fend off the cold once and for all.
