Dear Claire: What are Some Maintenance Tips for Winter?

Preparing Your Home for Winter: Essential Tips for Cold Weather Maintenance

Here we’re talking about what happens with Winter Wonderland. Meaning, “How do I maintain my property, especially considering the cold weather in our area?” With a lot of rain and sometimes snow, it can be a bit miserable.

I’m going to give you five things to think about and ideally, you will do them or you can think about them, or you can just reach out to me and I can give you people that will help you do these things so that they’re taken care of.

For the Winter Wonderland that we might be having this year, first, you want to check your windows and doors and make sure if you have storm windows that you put them on framing caps or fix any glazing that might be missing. Do a walk-around of your house and check to make sure everything looks like it’s working.

In colder temperatures, it’s going to take more energy to heat your house
and you don’t want it all escaping out your windows. A big, big one, is if your furnace — your heat source — and you want to service it. So if it’s a gas furnace, if it’s an oil furnace, those little, you know, Cadet heaters that are like a little box on the wall — all of those things need to be serviced. With the Cadets you just need to vacuum them and the furnace, just the pieces. Make sure you spend the $150, guys, to service them. It’s so worth just doing that and then leaving the heat on even if you leave because your pipes are going to burst if it drops below freezing for any length of time. So, keep your heat on.

We actually have a video that you can check out on our YouTube channel that shows you exactly How to Winterize a Hose Bib. It’s literally, like, $0.03 at the hardware store, or you can use an old rag, but you need to make sure your hose bib doesn’t say on the top of it, “frostproof.” You want to wrap it and insulate it so that the freezing temperatures don’t cause it to break and then cause you to have a big water problem.

I look forward to seeing you next week. If you have any real estate questions, or a topic that you’d like me to address, send me a message at [email protected]. And remember, we have our Paris Group Realty YouTube channel where you can access all our past information and some additional maintenance videos. We have all kinds of stuff there. Thank you so much, have a wonderful day, and we’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

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