Top 8 Home Maintenance Mistakes Homeowners Will Make This Winter

As you prepare your home for winter, avoid these common mistakes. From neglecting or overlooking certain tasks to making small errors during maintenance, this can cause significant damage if you’re not careful.

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Save money on energy costs and avoid costly repairs by making sure you don’t overlook these winter tasks before and during the winter season.

Common Winter Maintenance Mistakes

Ignoring Your Gutters

While most people will often inspect the roof from the bottom and make sure that there are no missing shingles, the same attention should be paid to your gutters. If you don’t clean out your gutter debris, you’ll quickly encounter issues as the snow starts to fall and the debris piles up. When your gutters are clogged and a rainstorm hits, the excess water will have nowhere to go but inside your home or the sides, causing water leaks.

It can also worsen foundation issues when the water seeps off your roof and into your home's foundation rather than using your gutter drainage system. Clean them out by yourself with a ladder, gloves and a bucket, or hire a local roofer to do it for you.

Leaving Hoses Connected to Faucets

When you leave your hose connected to a faucet, the water inside can freeze and cause the faucet to burst from the added pressure. Since you probably won’t use the hose during winter, make sure to unplug it and drain any leftover water and turn off the spigot.

For even better protection, consider adding a foam cover to your faucet. Failure to do so can result in a simple faucet replacement or a more expensive call to a plumber due to a ruptured pipe connected to the faucet.

Not Regularly Switching Out Furnace Filters

Keeping your furnace working efficiently can save you money on your energy bills and ensure your house stays warm when you need it the most. During the coldest months of the year, when you use the faucet the most, it’s recommended you switch out the filter at least once a month.

Most homeowners make the mistake of doing it only once before winter and then forgetting about it until the season is over. Replace the furnace filter regularly to ensure your family's comfort and to protect your wallet.

Forgetting to Update Ceiling Fan Direction

Perhaps one of the easiest tasks and also most forgotten is to reverse your ceiling fan direction during the winter. During the cold, the ceiling fans should run clockwise to push warm air down and spread it across the room while pulling cold air up. In the summer, you want the opposite direction. Some fans also have a winter mode that makes them easy to adjust.

Not Checking For Proper Insulation

Most people rarely think about the insulation in their home other than when they first get it installed. Keeping your home well-insulated can reduce your costs and ensure everything works as expected. It’s even more important that your attic is sufficiently insulated, otherwise, ice dams can form on your roof. As the heat escapes into the roof and melts the snow on top, the water will refreeze on the roof eaves and form into an ice dam.

You can get an audit done by a professional to ensure you have the right amount of insulation. Otherwise, consider replacing your existing insulation if you’ve experienced ice dams in the past or have encountered water leaks or pests in the material.

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Ignoring Your Plumbing Pipes

Insulating your plumbing pipes is one of the most important winterization home maintenance tasks you can do, and homeowners often completely ignore this one. There are also times when you might insulate some pipes but forget about the rest that are outside of the common areas, like the basement. A burst pipe can be costly to fix, so you’ll want to ensure you do it correctly. Simply add foam pipe insulation to all your pipes and not just those in the basement, including those in your attic and walls.

Leaving Air Leaks

It’s easy to ignore air leaks, since most people might not recognize just how much energy is lost through small gaps and cracks in your windows or doors. According to EnergyStar.gov, air leakage can make up 25 to 40 percent of the energy used for heating and cooling in a typical home. You can find air leaks by trying to feel for drafts or by lighting up a candle and seeing if the flame moves around different parts of your home. You can use caulk to seal up windows, doors and wall cracks, add weatherstripping foam around your windows and install a door sweep.

Forgetting to Trim Tree Branches

Not trimming your tree branches can cause roof problems when the snow piles up on them, causing them to break and land on your roof. The branches that don’t break can still scratch your roof shingles and damage the flashing as the wind moves them around. Since they’re not part of the home, most people won’t even think about trimming them, but it’s worth doing so for the protection of your roof. You can either try to do it yourself or call a pro arborist or roofer for your own safety.