5 Tips for Winterizing Your Home

Whether you’re planning to build or already own a home, one of the first things you should think about doing is making your home winter proof. Too often homeowners put off this simple chore and then find themselves with high heating costs and expensive damages in the middle of a brutal Indiana winter. Here are five great tips for winterizing your home.

• Insulate water lines. Frozen and burst water lines are a frustrating inconvenience and make for costly repairs. Water line insulation is cheap and easy to install, and quite effective. Consider paying a little more for heated coverings. These days they make heated covers for outside spigots too.

• Prevent ice dams. Ice ridges can build up on the edges of a roof, where temperatures are lower, and hold water on the roof. This can cause leaks and other damage when water backs up past the edges of the shingles. Your builder can insure adequate ventilation in your attic space, which helps to keep snow from melting in the central area. Insuring that the floor of your attic is well insulated and keeping recessed ceiling lighting to a minimum will also combat this problem.

• Fill in open spaces. Your builder will ensure that there aren’t any open voids on the outside of your home, but it’s best to do an inspection if you are currently a home owner. Spaces around outside spigots, dryer vents, and utility lines should be filled in with a sprayable expanding insulation foam, available in any hardware store.

• Install weather strips. All doors and windows, especially sliding glass doors, should be protected with insulation strips to keep heat from escaping. Consider covering windows with plastic also. You’ll be amazed how effective these simple and inexpensive precautions are.

• Change ceiling fan rotation. Most ceiling fans have a switch to allow you to change the direction they turn. In the winter, they should be set to turn clockwise to blow warm air back down into your living space.

For more home winterization tips or for information on building your new home, contact your professional custom home builders Indianapolis at G&G Custom Homes today.