Preparing Your Home to Stay Warm in the Winter

It is November and the seasonal cold winter (at least here in New York) is beginning to show itself! We switched over to using heat in our house back in October and will continue with heating for quite a few months until next year. In northern parts of the United States, heating comprises the majority of annual utility costs and can be quite high for many homeowners and renters. In fact, according to the Department of Energy, almost 50% of total household energy use is attributed to heating costs nationally. The super cold winters in combination with poorly insulated houses can lead to unnecessarily high heating usage.

Luckily, there are some relatively affordable and easy strategies that you can take to prepare your home for staying warm this winter season. Of course, if you are considering new construction or a major renovation for a location that includes cold seasons, you’ll want to address the design of the house through orientation to the sun and proper building enclosure system and materials. The exterior walls, windows, and roof of your house, which comprise the building enclosure system, are the major points of heat loss in winter. Heat transfer occurs through conduction and convection in our walls, roof, and windows and follow the second law of thermodynamics moving from hot to cold. This is why a warm interior space will tend to lose its heat to a cold outdoors if the walls and roof are not properly insulated.

Heat transfer also occurs through direct radiation, which will be beneficial in winter at windows that align with the sun to allow the radiant heat indoors. If you’re in a location with a large diurnal swing in temperature from day to night (warm days and cold nights), your home can benefit even more by incorporating thermal mass materials on the indoors in spaces that receive direct sun. Details on these topics and strategies will be saved for another day! For now, let’s take a look at ten accessible steps to winterize your home.

Your goal will be to identify areas in your home that may be leaking, losing, or transferring heat to the outdoors. Windows are highly conductive because glass is a dense material and easily transfers heat energy from one side to another. Air is a poor conductor because it is a gas, and the molecules are far apart from each other. Windows that are designed with at least two or three panes of glass with air gaps in between will provide a greater insulating value and reduce the heat loss to the exterior. In addition, when cold winds blow around the outside of your house, the convective forces enhance the removal of heat energy from windows. Because of this, a great winter season update is to remove any exterior screens from window frames and replace these out with storm windows to provide an extra layer of glass and an additional air gap.

You can also treat the interior of your windows with insulating blinds or curtains. There are a lot of options for these on the market and they will help reduce both air leaks and general heat loss around your windows. It is still important to have adequate natural daylight, especially in winter months with short days, so finding insulating blinds that also provide filtered light is helpful. You can also open the blinds during the day (let that sun in!) and close them up at night (keep that heat in!). While we’re on the topic of windows and fenestration, take a look at the caulking or weatherstripping around the exterior edges of your windows and doors. Replace any worn or degraded weatherstripping to prevent air gap leaks and heat loss, which will also prevent water and moisture from penetrating into the wall system. On the interior, you can purchase fashionable or utilitarian style draft stoppers to line at the bottom edge of doors and windows if you notice some significant gaps.

Depending on how your house is designed, you may have an attic space between the ceiling of your habitable spaces and the roof of your home. Attics often serve as a buffer between the outdoor temperature and the indoor conditioned spaces of a house. In cold seasons, the attic will resemble cold outdoor temperatures, so it is important to address the insulation in your ceilings. You can amplify the insulation layer by placing natural mineral wool or cotton fiber blanket insulation materials across the floor of your attic. This is an easy DIY fix and uses natural and eco-friendly materials, but it is important to wear an airtight face-mask to reduce particulate inhalation during the installation process. Stay away from fiberglass insulation installs as these create fine particle dust elements that are problematic for your respiratory system beyond the installation time.

While we’re on the topic of insulation, take a look at your water heater and wrap it up tight with a blanket of insulation if it isn’t already. This will help prevent heat loss from the water heater and reduce the energy input required to keep your water warm. This is also true for the water pipes in your house. I lived in a rental house in Tucson, Arizona where the water pipes ran along the roof on the outside of the home. The insulation around the pipes had degraded over time and was not maintained, and one winter morning I woke up to what I thought was a sunny but rainy day based on the amount of water falling into my backyard. But it wasn’t rainy in my front yard!? I soon realized that a pipe had burst due to it being frozen overnight and the expansion during the freeze caused a break that then began to spew water as the pipe thawed in the warm morning sun. Avoid these minor disasters and general heat loss by checking up on the insulation around all of your water pipes in unconditioned spaces (exterior, basements, garages, attics, etc.).

If your home is utilizing a central air system for heating, be sure to switch out your air filters at the beginning of each seasonal change. Keeping fresh air filters will help reduce the fan energy required to push air through the system and into spaces in your home. It also helps to keep the air quality in check. If you have a fireplace or wood stove in your house, be sure to close up the flue or damper while the fireplace is not in use. Otherwise, you’ll have a lot of drafty heat loss through the chimney due to stack effect.

Finally, you can keep your thermostat settings a few degrees cooler if you wear warm clothes and use extra blankets. This is a great energy and cost saving strategy and also helps with a good night’s sleep as our core body temp rests better in cooler temperatures. If you want to keep a checklist of these winterization strategies that you can refer to each year, download the free “10 Low-Cost Easy Winterization Steps for Your Home” PDF guide. 

If you are interested in more information about designing or renovating your house with energy efficient strategies, reach out to AIDA, LLC today for a consultation.You can always find more information and healthy home resources at Aletheia Ida Design and Architecture, LLC (AIDA, LLC) at www.aletheiaida.com.