Winterizing your home can help you save

It is cold outside and some of that cold is coming inside! Electric and heating companies have had a number of calls about bursting pipes.

However, winterizing your home can keep the cold air out. It is an easy task, if you do it before the cold weather arrives.

“Insulation, insulation, insulation. I mean, you can’t overdue that,” Ted Sermon said.

Sermon is the president of Sermon Service and Electricity and said they have been extremely busy this week.

“People call us and they have drains that are backed up, lines that are frozen, they have furnaces that are not working correctly,” Sermon said.

The best time to winterize your home is before winter, but he said it is not too late. It will just be difficult and expensive, he said.

“We do a lot of what we call ‘gutter heat tape’. That goes up on the roof and that’s to keep those roof gutters clear and the water running and we can’t hardly do that this time of year because there’s snow on the roof,” Sermon said.

Letting your faucet run is one way to prevent your pipes from bursting, Plumbing Service Manager Steve Winn said.

“For the freezing temperatures, you want to go to your kitchen faucet, put it on cold, and just have it run very slowly and allow that just to run slowly overnight,” Winn said.

Winn said one thing people tend to forget is:

“To make sure that your hoses are off your hose bids outside because if there’s water still in the hoses, it will back up and freeze your faucet, so in the spring when you turn your faucet on, you’re going to get a flood,” he said.

If you are leaving for the winter it is recommended to turn off the main water valve to your house so you do not have continuous water pressure.

Other ways to winterize your home is by reversing direction of your ceiling fans, turning down your water heater, using caulking and weather sealing on your windows and even something as simple as covering the bottom of your doors.