By Dennis Floyd
Help Around the House

This year when you find old man Winter on your stoop, make sure he is knocking on a storm door. Winterize your home to keep Winter outside! Relatively uncomplicated and inexpensive, winterizing can spare you from chilly nights and high heating bills.

To winterize your home, take these basic steps:

1. Install insulation. Your home hides crevices through which heat escapes. Insulation seals those gaps and traps fugitive heat within your home, saving you money and keeping you warm. For guaranteed results:

· Affix weather-stripping to garage doors. This is important when you enter your home through your garage. Measure, cut and then nail-on flexible seal weather-stripping to the door's bottom. For the door's top and sides, nail heavy-duty vinyl weather stripping that keeps wind outdoors.

· Bind weather stripping around windows and doors. Heat loss through window and door cracks can increase a home's heating bill by 35 percent. On a windy day, hold a tissue near cracks along your home's window and door frames. If you see the tissue move, you have drafts. Use caulking to seal the tiny cracks. A thin, clear plastic film attached to the inside of a window with two-sticky-sided tape can prevent cold air from seeping through crevices. Closed shutters, blinds, curtains and draperies also help insulate windows. Fasten a door sweep onto your door's foot end to prevent cold air from slipping under it.

· Seal up the attic. Seal cracks around the attic access holes and lighting fixtures then add insulation to the attic floor so that heat does not escape from your living space into your attic. But is you use your attic as a "living" room, insulate its ceiling and walls but not its floor so heat can rise-up through the floor from the rest of the house.

2. Install storm doors. Storm doors block drafts. Each storm door should include a doorstop that controls how far it can open. More cold air sweeps in through a wide-open door than through one controlled stop. A storm door should also come with a pneumatic closer that prevents it from opening too quickly. You can install two pneumatic closures on your storm door for extra protection against high winds.

3. Add fireplace insulation, dampers and doors. A lit fireplace can actually draw heat away from your home by pulling it up the flue. The damper, when it is in good shape, can minimize heat loss through the fireplace. Check to make sure your damper is in good working order and replace it if necessary. Also glass doors over the fireplace opening will decrease heat loss through the chimney as the fire smolders. Seal off and insulate your chimney if you never use your fireplace and insulate the flue so condensation doesn't form in the chimney.

4. Replace furnace filters. Clogged furnace filters decrease airflow through the heating system, demand the unit to work harder and, therefore, increase your heating bills. Fortunately, filters are disposable, inexpensive and easily replaced. Most standard filters need to be changed monthly.

5. Prevent frozen or broken water pipes. If your pipes freeze, they can break, leaving you without water for days. Even pipes not exposed to the outdoors can freeze, especially those that can run through exterior walls or crawl spaces. You can snap foam rubber insulation sleeves right onto your pipes. Just cut them lengthwise to make them fit as closely as possible on ends, corners, and junctions then cover slits and joints with vinyl duct tape. You can also wrap pipes running through unheated areas with special heating strips that use electricity to localize heat in potential problem areas.

6. Close off unused rooms. Conserve fuel by using drapery to close off rooms you rarely use. You can always remove the drapery to use the room for special occasions.

7. Check carbon monoxide and fire detectors. Fires are more likely to breaks out in your home during the winter. And carbon monoxide threats are more serious in the winter when homes are tightly sealed or "winterized."

8. Prepare for winter storms. Stock the woodpile. Make sure all flashlights have working batteries. Store candles and matches in case of a power outage. Have an emergency heat source, such as a fireplace, wood stove, space heater or gas log, on hand.

(Dennis Floyd, CEO of Chadwick Homes, is president of the Home Builders Association of Midwest Georgia, which serves a membership of approximately 385 builders and associate members in Fayette, Coweta, Spalding, Heard and Meriwether counties.)

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