Prepare for Winter with These 5 Ways to Winterize Your Home

Southeast Missouri winters are unpredictable. We get mild stretches where the furnace barely runs, then a cold snap that drops us into the teens for a week. The homes that get through it comfortably are the ones that did a little preparation in the fall — not the ones that called for help at 10 p.m. on the coldest night of the year.

Here are five things worth doing before winter sets in.

1. Have the furnace looked at before you need it

The single most common emergency call we get is a furnace that failed on its first hard run of the season. It did not break that night; it had a worn part or a dirty component that finally gave out under load.

A fall inspection catches the things that cause those failures: a cracked heat exchanger, a failing igniter or flame sensor, a blower motor drawing too much current, loose electrical connections, or a flue that is not venting properly. Several of those are safety issues, not just comfort ones. If your system runs on gas, a combustion check matters as much as the mechanical one.

2. Change the filter, then keep changing it

A clogged filter chokes airflow. The furnace runs longer to reach temperature, the heat exchanger runs hotter than designed, and in bad cases the system short-cycles on a high-limit switch. It is the cheapest maintenance item in the house and the most frequently neglected.

Check a one-inch filter monthly during heating season. Thicker media filters last longer, but they still have a schedule. If you have pets or anyone in the house has allergies, expect to change more often than the package suggests.

3. Deal with the attic before you deal with the thermostat

Most homes in our area lose more heat through the attic than through anything else. If your insulation is thin, compressed, or unevenly distributed — common in older Poplar Bluff homes and in houses that have had attic work done over the years — you are paying to heat the space above your ceiling.

Insulation and attic ventilation are part of what we do, and it is often the higher-return project. Adding insulation to an under-insulated attic usually does more for comfort and operating cost than replacing a furnace that still has life in it.

4. Seal the leaks you can find

Warm air escapes and cold air gets in through gaps you can usually feel on a windy day:

• Around exterior door frames and window trim
• Where pipes, wiring, and vents pass through exterior walls
• At the attic hatch or pull-down stairs, which are frequently uninsulated
• Around recessed lights and bath fans in the ceiling below the attic
• In ductwork running through unconditioned crawl space or attic

Weatherstripping and caulk handle most of the envelope. Duct leakage is a bigger deal than people expect — conditioned air lost into a crawl space is heat you paid for and never received.

5. Protect the plumbing and know your shutoffs

Before the first hard freeze, disconnect and drain garden hoses, shut off and drain exterior spigots where you can, and insulate pipes in crawl spaces, garages, and against exterior walls.

Then find your main water shutoff and make sure everyone in the house knows where it is and how to work it. A frozen pipe becomes a much smaller problem when someone can stop the water in thirty seconds.

One more thing: have a plan for a long outage

Ice storms take power lines down here. Without electricity, a gas furnace still will not run — the blower and controls need power. If losing heat for a day or more is a serious problem for your household, a standby generator is worth a conversation.

If you would rather not do it yourself

We handle heating inspections, insulation, duct sealing and cleaning, and generators across Poplar Bluff and the surrounding Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas area. Our technicians are NATE and EPA certified, and we have been a Carrier Factory Authorized Dealer since 2003.

Call (573) 785-6768 to get on the schedule before the rush. Fall books up quickly, and it is a much better time to find a problem than January.