10 Tips to get your home ready for the winter.

We’re blessed with amazing fall weather in Northern California, but even though Indian summer blazes away, the (much-needed) rain and cold of winter are right around the corner. Homeowners would be wise to spend a little time prepping for the winter months, too, and this quick checklist of maintenance and repairs will help you keep your home safe, dry, and energy efficient until spring.

1.  Clean the gutters:

You’ll want to get up on a ladder and clean out your gutters at least once before winter – probably after the leaves fall. This will prevent leaves, twigs, acorns, and other debris from clogging up the gutters and causing rainwater to sit and not flow properly, possibly causing damage. If you get a lot of falling debris from trees, you can try capping your gutters with gutter guards.

2. Check your roof:

While you’re up on the ladder checking gutters, it’s a good idea to safely climb up onto the roof (if your roof has a steep pitch or you’re high up, you might want to leave this to the pros.) Check for missing, cracked, or damaged roof shingles and replace them. Check the flashing around your chimney, skylights, and vents. Before the cold and rains come, you’ll want to fix those yourself or have a roofer come out to take care of it.

3. Trim back landscaping:

Trim tree branches or shrubs that are getting too close to the house, roof, or electrical wires. Also, try to spot dead or weak branches that could fall once they get heavy with rain. Thoroughly rake your lawn of leaves after they all fall, and you might want to aerate your lawn and adjust your sprinklers to reflect the rainy season, if you’re still watering your lawn and haven’t already shut them off completely.

4. Check your detectors:

While you’re going over your fall/winter home checklist, it’s a great time to check those smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that are often forgotten. Replace the batteries in your smoke and CO2 detectors whether you think they need it or not, and hit the test button to make sure the units are still functioning properly.

5. Address drafty windows:

If you have an old home, a lot of heat and AC is being lost right through your windows. If you have thin single-paned glass and are losing expensive heat right through the panes, hang heavy curtains to keep the heat inside (you can get a curtain that also repels sunlight to keep your home cooler in the summer). Make sure to check the edge of the windows and reseal any dried or cracking caulk so there is a complete seal and drafts won’t come in.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that sealing up drafts will save you to up to 30% of energy use annually.

6. Seal up doors:

If heat is leaving and cold air entering right under your door, you’re throwing good money out. Installing a storm door on the outside will help, but often isn’t needed in temperate climates like in northern California. So a simple temporary solution is a draft snake, a sandbag-like roll that you can place at the crack of doors, keeping hot air in and cold air from entering.

7. Check your furnace or heating unit:

For those of you in older homes, you may still have a furnace that should be checked by a professional once a year, preferably before the cold season. For most people who have standard heating units, make sure they are tuned up, operating properly, free of debris on the outside, and the vents and filters are all cleaned.

8. Change the direction of your ceiling fans:

Most people forget you can even do this, but with a simple flip of a switch (usually up on the side or base of the unit) you can reverse the direction of your ceiling fan’s blades. In the summer, you’ll want a counter-clockwise rotation, which produces cooling breezes, but in the winter you’ll want clockwise rotation, which will push the warm air back down into the room and not have it trapped at the ceiling.

Simply by adjusting your ceiling fans, you can cut our heating costs by up to 10% every winter, according to The Daily Green.

9. Fight the freeze:

It doesn’t happen every night, but there is always a spell where we reach freezing temperatures at night in the Sacramento and Placer County areas – sometimes down into the 20s. To make sure your pipes don’t freeze (and then burst) wrap pipes around water heaters, any outdoor pipes, or exposed pipes under crawl spaces in the cheap and effective foam sleeving they sell at any Home Depot.

Drain your garden hoses and turn off the spigots before a freeze is coming, and you might want to drain the air conditioner pipes as well. Bring potted plants that aren’t fit for freezing temps inside and cover rose bushes or other fragile flowers with tarps just for the cold nights.

You might also want to lower your water heater’s presetting down to 120 degrees in the winter, as most people keep it at the standard 140 degrees but that can waste a whole lot of energy.

10. Ready your fireplace and chimney:

For those of you lucky enough to have a fireplace, regular maintenance will not only keep it working great but safe. In older wood-burning fireplaces, creosote builds up, a highly flammable substrate that’s hard to see. You’ll want to make sure to have your fireplace cleaned regularly, the chimney checked to see if it needs repairs and is safe, and also know how to operate your flue so cold air doesn’t escape when you don’t have a fire roaring.

10 Ways "going green" around the house can also save you big money.

1. Install high efficiency light bulbs.
Did you know that the traditional light bulbs we still use waste up to 90% of their energy emitting heat? So replace your normal incandescent bulbs with high-efficiency Energy Star bulbs. They’ll lower your energy costs, last much longer, and are much friendlier on the environment.  Look for compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), and light emitting diodes (LEDs), which you can buy at any Home Depot.  Those should save you a couple hundred dollars or more per year. And if every family in the U.S.A. replaced their bulbs, we’d reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one trillion pounds!

2. Program your thermostat.
A new “smart” thermostat, like an Energy Star, allows you to program specific temperatures for different times of the day.  Too often we set one temperature for night and one for day, or even worse, one set temperature, which is completely unnecessary. So you can lower the temperature at night (when you are under blankets) or during the day (when you are at work.)  The U.S. Department of Energy estimates you’ll save 5 to 15 percent per year by turning your thermostat back 10 to 15 degrees for eight hours a day.

It's recommended you keep the thermostat at 78 degrees or higher when cooling the house in the summer, and 68 degrees or cooler in the winter.

3. Stop pouring money down the drain!
Water is expensive these days, and the vast majority of indoor water usage comes from toilets flushing (30% of residential consumption) and showers. So install low-flow showerheads in your bathrooms - they only cost $20 or so and spray no more than 2.5 gallons per minute, saving you a couple hundred dollars per year. And install high-efficiency (low-flush) toilets, which can save a family of four a whopping $300 per year or more in water bills. If you don’t want to replace your new toilet, there’s a super simple (and free) way to turn it into a low-flushing model. Just fill up a few plastic water s with sand and place them in the tank!

4. Plug air leaks
Whenever you turn up your heat or AC, drafts can waste a lot of your money. Close doors, windows, and curtains appropriately to keep the heat or air in the rooms you need it most. Consider foam rollers or stick-on energy tape under doors or around window frames where the most air leaks in or out. In addition, caulking around exterior doors and windows and installing weather stripping in the chilly seasons can save you a bundle on energy costs!

5. Set up an outdoor compost bin.
Did you know that up to 50% of the trash in your home comes from food waste? All of that organic material goes in the trash and fills up landfills or is even dumped in the ocean! So instead of burdening our trash system with food scraps, set up a small compost station in your back yard. Over time, it will naturally break down organic material and create a safe, health fertilizer for your yard and plants. Studies show that separating food scraps from the trash also increases the amount of recyclable materials that are properly separated.

6. Optimize your water heater
If you don't have one installed already, put an insulated blanket around your hot water heater and also insulate the pipes around the water heater. Insulated blankets cost between $10 and $20, and you can get pipe insulation for less than $1 for six feet. Also consider turning the temperature on the water heater down to 120 degrees. Think about it – we turn the water on super hot and then use cold water to cool it down to the proper warm temperature – what a waste! Setting your water heater to a comfortable 120 degrees. It will save you up to $450 annually in energy bills…and use far less water!

7. Fans
In warm climates like the Central Valley of California, it takes far more energy (and money) to cool your house every year than it does to heat it. So during the scorching summer, instead of cranking up the air conditioning in the whole house, use fans. Ceiling fans are inexpensive to install and can cool down a room for cheap. Attic fans do a great job pushing hot air out of the attic, which accumulates because heat rises, attics have less ventilation, and roofing materials like tiles or shingles collect heat.

 On rooms that face the sun (on the south and west of the house) hang heavy solar-blocking curtains to keep the rooms cool, and consider energy efficient windows to protect against UV rays.

8. Native plants and shade trees.
Pull up your front lawn – which wastes an incredible amount of water for nothing more than an aesthetic. In fact, 30% of all water used in the U.S. goes to lawns and outdoor irrigation! By installing native species and draught-tolerant plants, you’ll have a much more attractive, natural, and garden-like front yard – and help the planet in a huge way. Shade trees plated on the south and west of your house can reduce AC bills by up to 15%, and many cities will come plant them for your for free.

9. Rainwater barrels and proper irrigation.
With California in the throes one of the worst draughts in U.S. history, every drop is precious – even rainwater. So why not put out a few barrels in your yard and next to your house, with gutters and downspout flowing into them. In a typical good night of rain, 300 gallons of water may be dumped on your roof alone, so capture this water and then use it for natural irrigation.

10. Go solar.
There is no doubt –the solar revolution is here, and in dry and hot climates like California, it’s nonsensical NOT to take advantage of the free and abundant sunshine. Thankfully, the cost to install solar panels on your roof or at your home has gone way down in the last several years, as technology and infrastructure has improved. Solar panels pay for themselves pretty quickly and grant homeowners huge tax rebates and incentives. If buying solar panels was too big of an investment, you can even lease them, which costs less than your energy bill every month!

For more information how solar works and availability in your area, click here.