CLEVELAND — The outside of your home is especially important to winterize since it's completely exposed to the elements. Experts say the best time to start preparing your home is in the fall, but it’s not too late.

 

What You Need To Know

  • Properly winterizing your home can help lower winter utility bills and avoid costly repairs

  • Winterizing your home consists of insulating pipes located in unheated areas, disconnecting outdoor hoses, sealing off access doors and more

  • Most materials needed to winterize your home can be found at plumping and hardware stores

In the winter time, people seek heat. But residents’ utility bills could be through the roof if they don’t take the time to winterize their home, said Peter Menyhart from Menyhart Plumbing and Heating Supply in Northeast Ohio.

“A lot of times, people make the mistake of kind of forgetting about the furnace filter that gets clogged. And basically at that point, it's almost like it's choking the furnace. So, it'll cause a furnace to work harder, using more gas, more electricity, and also the furnace in doing so the furnace will turn on and off more often,” said Menyhart.

To further prevent costly winter utility bills and avoid pipes bursting, Menyhart recommended insulating pipes or faucets that are in unheated areas.

“If you have any pipes that might be exposed to cool temperatures or, you know, below freezing temperatures, they make pipe wrap, which is, you can either just insulate the pipe with like foam insulation. That would be a little bit more economical and it helps to keep the pipes from freezing. If they're really going to be exposed. A lot of times it's a good idea to also put out it's called heat tape. It's like electrical wire that goes in there and it kind of keeps the pipes warm,” said Menyhart.

He also said to seal off access doors and repair damaged windows.

“You definitely want to try to get that taken care of, just get it fixed just for safety reasons or if you can't, you know, you can buy the plastic and the hardware store, or even some of the Walgreens or Rite aid, places like that, where you can just put the plastic on the windows and maybe just heat it up with a hairdryer and it just kind of sticks to the windows and helps to seal it,” said Menyhart.

Menyart said you should also disconnect outdoor hoses and allow the water to drain from the pipe — preventing freezing which can cause pipes to burst.

Lastly, he recommended finding the master shutoff valve so that if a pipe bursts in your house, you know how to turn off the water.

“If you know where your main water shutoff is in the house, you can just run down there and shut the main off. Of course, that’s going to shut the entire house down, but at least that way that could buy you some time to maybe find the correct shutoff valve for that particular spigot. And once you find that, then you can turn the main back on,” said Menyhart.

For more information on how to properly winterize your home you can contact your local heating and plumbing store, or hardware store.