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It happens every year at my house: I wake up one morning, and as though a switch was flicked overnight, it’s suddenly cold and I have to hunt down my cozy slippers. And that’s usually when I realize I haven’t really taken any steps to winterize my house.
If that also describes you, the good news is that winterizing your home isn’t a terribly complicated process. With a few affordable products and a little effort, you can button your home up and ensure that it’s going to be as comfortable as possible when those frigid winds start blowing.
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Generally speaking, your goals are to reduce cold air infiltrating into the interior and increase the efficiency of your heating system. There are some straightforward, cheap, and easy ways to do that:
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Change the direction of your ceiling fans. If you have ceiling fans in your house, you should already know that the direction they spin matters. For the winter, set your fans to spin clockwise and run them at low speed. This will help push warm air back down toward the floor without causing a chilly breeze in the process.
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Clean the gutters. If your gutters are clogged, water won’t be able to drain efficiently from your roof, ice dams will form, and your roof (and interior of your home) can be damaged as a result. Before it’s zero degrees out, break out the ladder and clean those suckers.
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Uncover/cover vents. Your heating vents push warm air into rooms, but they can also allow chilly drafts to circulate or warm air to dribble out of a room if they’re not in active use. A few magnetic vent covers allow you to block off vents that are doing more harm than good, helping to hold warm air longer.
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Install door stoppers. No exterior door is going to have a perfect seal, which means cold air will leak in and warm air will leak out. A door stopper is a simple, easy addition to any door that will stop those drafts cold.
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Install some weather stripping tape. Adhesive rubber weather stripping applied around door frames and windows can eliminate tiny gaps that let air leak in and out. If that’s not going to work for you, there’s also weather sealing tape like this, which can be applied directly onto windows and door frames to block those drafts, and can be removed when the weather warms up again.
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Install outdoor faucet covers. If you have any exterior faucets or spigots, they need to be protected with faucet covers to prevent them from freezing—and potentially freezing and bursting the pipes that feed them, which probably run inside the house, ready to cause expensive damage.
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Install window film. It’s the simplest idea in the world, but it actually works: Cover your windows with plastic, use heat to tighten the plastic into a drum-like sheet, and voila—you’ve added very effective insulation to what are essentially holes in your house. These window kits are pretty easy to install and require just a hair dryer to finish.
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Install a chimney balloon. Chimneys and fireplaces can be draft central during the winter. An inexpensive chimney balloon is an easy and effective way to block those drafts. If you have a fireplace you don’t use often, a fireplace plug is also a great idea.
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Add some pipe insulation tubes. Frozen pipes are no fun. In fact, they’re potentially expensive and damaging—so now is the time to invest a little time and money into insulating your exposed pipes, wherever they might be. Insulating foam tubes are super easy to install (they’re slit, so they just slide on, seal with adhesive edges, and they’re easy to cut) and will spare you the nightmare of frozen pipes.
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Put on the air conditioner covers. If you have window air conditioner units that you’ve chosen to leave installed over the winter, a simple, inexpensive A/C cover will prevent cold air from migrating into your house through them, especially if combined with some weather stripping or sealant tape around the window.
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Hang up thermal curtains. If you’ve applied weather stripping and/or plastic films and your windows are still drafty, heavy thermal curtains can stop drafts from penetrating into the room and hold warm air back from the cold windows, keeping everything toasty. Plus, they look nice—and can hide all that plastic film.
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Use an attic stair insulation cover. If you have an attic that you access via pull-down stairs or a ladder, that’s a huge weak spot in your home insulation game because there can be significant heat transfer at that opening. An attic stairway cover will seal that weak spot off and eliminate one more place where you lose heat during the winter.
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Put on a water heater blanket. Insulating your water heater is a good idea in general, as it can save a significant amount in energy costs. But a water heater blanket becomes even more important in winter, because your water heater is probably located in a pretty cold area of your house. Keeping it insulated will keep you in hot water for less money.