So the snow has already started to show its ugly face here in Southern Ontario. Especially after the chaos that just ended with Hurricane Sandy, and after having the wind blowing at 100km in and around the great lakes. I have decided to write out a little article on how to prepare your home for the long winter ahead of us in Ontario. Things that will help prevent costly repairs, or problems.
1. Clean out the leaves and other debris from your homes gutters, window wells, basement door entrances and ditches. Doing this will prevent water damage both structural, and mould damage.
2. Check your homes driveways and paths for uneven sections. By evening out your walkways and driveway you are preventing slips and falls in the winter. This ensures you protect your loved ones, and any other people who could potentially file a law suit it serious injury occurs.
3. Purchase ice melter for the winter, enough to last you about 5 months worth. You can never have to much ice melter!
4. Have your furnace and fireplace checked, safety inspected, and cleaned. This type of maintenance should be mandatory due to the fact that its your source of heat during sub-zero temperature weather. If there are any cracks or leaks there could be a possible carbon monoxide leak, which can be deadly.
5. Change furnace filter to prevent all the dust or potential mould get pushed throughout your home. Your filter should be changed every three months unless you own a super efficient HEPA filter or Healthy Climate filter. Those filters only have to be changed once a year, but there costly. Changing your filter protects your furnace from overworking itself, and having a potential fire hazard in your home.
6. Change your smoke detector, and carbon monoxide detector batteries. Regardless if you “think” you put batteries in a couple years ago or maybe your think it was a month or so ago. Replace them, who cares if the batteries still somewhat have power in them its always better to be safe rather than sorry.
So this is just a basic list that should be quite inexpensive to achieve, and can prevent a world of problems in the future.
