It doesn’t matter if the weather outside is too hot or too cold, the weather inside needs to be comfortable in both summer and winter. However, cooling and/or heatingwill not be efficient and constant, unless your property has proper weather proofing. The electricity bills will skyrocket, your appliances will work overtime and all that energy consumption will contribute more to the country’s energy crisis. Therefore, it is essential to weather proof your home in advance. Here are four points to keep in mind while going about it.
Insulate Your Home by Patching Leaks
Unnoticed or unattended leaks, holes and gaps are often some of the main culprits behind a house losing energy-efficiency, so seek them out and patch them up. It isn’t uncommon for window frames and walls to have gaps in between them and insulation tape is your friend to seal such gaps.
Be Careful with Roof Maintenance
The importance of checking your roof on a regular basis cannot be stressed enough, especially during the cold snowy months. First and foremost, if you ignore that gap in the shingles, or don’t fix that broken skylight, wind, snow and ice water will get in and the heating will become significantly less effective. Secondly, if the snow, ice and water from the leaky roof manages to damage your carpet, furniture and/or any other part of the interior, your insurance company may not even cover it because damage to your roof is complicated when it comes to filing an insurance claim. They may just label it as a maintenance issue and refute your claim for the damaged property altogether, which can be quite frustrating and expensive to say the least!
Don’t Ignore the Attic and the Basement
Any crawl space, basement or attic that is not properly insulated will make your home less energy-efficient and unless you investigate or call in professionals to do the investigation for you, you may not ever come to know how much money in heating and cooling expenses you are losing every year, because of the gaps in those often overlooked spaces. So investing in a crawl space encapsulation is not only beneficial to your home but also to you and your family as this can prevent pests from entering your property and will stop water damage and mold growth from occurring.
An attic insulation also entails many benefits and advantages that you will never find nor experience in homes that are under insulated or not insulated at all. So consider having this kind of insulation at home.
A Programmable Thermostat is Essential These Days
A bunch of smart, connected products in the thermostat industry has made controlling indoor temperatures with maximum energy efficiency so much easier these days. If you don’t have one already, get a programmable thermostat to maintain a comfortable temperature in every room, without spending any more energy than you need to. Check out some of the advantages of installing a smart thermostat below:
- They save money by using less energy to maintain optimum temperatures
- Programmability of the device allows users to set different temperatures for different times of the day, depending on when they will be active, asleep or out
- Smart thermostats learn the preferences of the people in a home and adjust accordingly to provide the most comfortable indoor weather conditions automatically
- More advanced devices may offer features like power consumption stats, app-based control from anywhere in the world, and movement-based temperature adjustment
Weatherproofing can be expensive if you try to do everything at once, so the advice would be to take things one step at a time. The good news is that if you are thorough with your weatherproofing efforts, it will pay for itself down the line.
Image Credits: Roof Maintenance from Tong_stocker /Shutterstock
