Now is the Time to Winterize Your Home

I live in an old home.  It’s in the historic district of my town.  In fact, when we converted it from a duplex back to a single family home, it was front-page news (tells you a lot about my town).   Another establishing detail you should know is that it gets rather cold in South Dakota.  How cold you ask?  So cold that by February everyone here starts to wonder why we live here in the first place.

And according to several news sources the cost of heating your home this year is going to skyrocket (here is one source).    So if we all take steps now before Jack Frost is nipping at our toes, maybe we can keep our cupboards from being bare come spring.

I bring all of this up, because for the first time in my life, I winterized our home while it was still warm out.

Our weekend project was to reinstall the screen door that was ripped off by a summer windstorm.  Since I’m not Mr. Fix-it, this took me two days.  In reality it only took 4 hours, but while I was out at the store getting four measly screws that I was missing, my wife accepted a dinner party invitation and the project took a backseat until Sunday.

When I got that done, I was so impressed with myself that I decided to tackle another project…the dreaded basement windows.  Confessional time, my Step Dad came over to make fun of my workmanship on the screendoor and it was his attendance that provided the true catalyst for me insulating the windows.

But never-the-less, I now have two less drafty windows to worry about come winter.

Actually, all I did was shove some loose insulation I had laying around (don’t ask), around the frames of the windows. And then put plastic over them.  These are old beaten up windows so there are gaps around them that I should have taken care of long ago.  We looked into replacing them when we did the remodel, but the quote was over a grand and I think we decided to spend that dough elsewhere…like in our monthly heating bill.

As I mentioned above, I’m not handy at all and am the last person who should be doling out advice when it come to this kind of stuff.  So if you want proper tips on how to winterize your home, check out your local energy provider for some some actual tips.  For example, here are the tips that my energy company provides.

Those tips are fine, but I bet the wise readers of The Happy Rock can provide plenty of winterizing tips that would put those to shame.  So if you live in an area where it’s not unusual to have your coat zipper freeze to your lips, please share your favorite winter tips.  Allow me to start:

LONG JOHNS!!!

Until next time,

-DD

Here are two other articles for additional information :

13 Tips To Winterize Your Home(MSN Money)
Winterizing Your Home(About.com)

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