Fall is a great of year to take care of maintenance chores around your house before cold weather arrives.
Save Energy and Prevent Heat Loss
The first place to start is to check the weatherstripping around entry doors and the threshold under them for air leaks that can rob your home of heated air in cold weather. Replace any damaged or worn weatherstripping or thresholds with those from Duck® brand.
Next, pull down the folding stairs to your attic and check the staircase opening for gaps. Install a Duck® brand Attic Stairway Cover in the attic over the opening to keep warm air from rising up through the attic.
Heating System Maintenance
Your heating and cooling system is the biggest user of energy in the home, so it’s important to make sure to have your system inspected and any maintenance performed once a year in the fall.
The trained professionals at Carrier will inspect and adjust all aspects of your furnace and air delivery system. In addition it’s important to replace your air filter every 1-3 months as needed so the system will run efficiently.
Home Fire Safety
Finally, make sure you have functioning smoke and carbon monoxide alarms throughout your home and replace the batteries at least once a year.
To help prevent electrical fires, replace standard electrical outlets with AFCI (Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter) outlets from Leviton, which can detect shorts in wiring and cut the power before a fire occurs.
Read our article on Smart Home Maintenance and Improvement Tips for Fall to find out more.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Danny Lipford: Hi, I’m Danny Lipford. If you’re a smart homeowner, it’ll make life a lot easier for you in the months ahead. I’ve got some great tips for you.
First of all it’s going to get cold. You may as well tighten up the envelope of your home a bit by replacing any weatherstripping that may be worn—that starts at your front door. Check out all the weatherstripping. Check out the gap below the door, because you may need to install a door sweep. There’s some fantastic ones at Duck brand.
Duck brand has all kinds of weatherization products for you, including one a lot of people don’t even thing about, and that’s the attic stairway. Your access into the attic is a source where your heated air in your house can escape just like a chimney. This attic cover is very efficient, it only costs about forty dollars, and that will seal up that and prevent it from being a problem.
Another thing a smart homeowner would do is to know when to call a professional, and right now is a great time of the year to have your heating system serviced. Think about it, your heating and cooling system uses 55 percent of your utility bill, so it only makes sense to call the guys at Carrier. Have them come out and completely service your unit. They can also advise you if you need a brand new one.
Safety is also a very important part of being a smart homeowner, and one way that you can prevent electrical fires in your house—there’s 51,000 of them a year—one way you can do that is to install, or have someone install, one of these simple devices. It’s an AFCI, or an Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter.
That’s a big term, but basically what this will do is protect in the event—protect your home in the event of an electrical arc. Now, that can take place inside the wall, and you never even know it. Or if you have a little nick on, say, a lamp cord that can also be a problem.
But this from Leviton can really help you solve that problem. It’s only 30 dollars, and if you install it yourself, make sure you turn off the circuit breakers to that particular circuit.
You can find out more information at TodaysHomeowner.com
