Preparing your home for winter

Canadian winters find every weakness in a house. The work below is ordinary maintenance, but doing it in October rather than January is the difference between a small job and an emergency call-out.

Start with the heating system

• Book a service before the first cold snap. Technicians are busiest when systems fail, which is exactly when everyone else needs one too. A pre-season service means any parts needed arrive before you're without heat.
• Change the filter. A clogged filter makes a furnace or air handler work harder and can cause it to shut down on high limit. Most homes need a fresh filter every one to three months during the heating season.
• Clear the area around the equipment. Furnaces and air handlers need air and access. Storage stacked against them is both an efficiency and a safety problem.
• If you have a heat pump, keep the outdoor unit clear of leaves and snow drifts, and never stack snow against it. It needs airflow all winter, and it will periodically run a defrost cycle, which is normal.

Stop the heat escaping

• Find the draughts. On a windy day, run the back of your hand around window frames, door frames, electrical outlets on exterior walls, and where pipes or wires enter the house.
• Weatherstrip and caulk. Replacing worn weatherstripping on doors and caulking gaps around window trim is inexpensive, and air leaks are a meaningful part of heat loss in older homes.
• Check the attic hatch. It's one of the largest single air leaks in many houses and one of the easiest to fix with weatherstripping and a bit of rigid insulation.
• Look at the attic itself. If the insulation is thin, patchy or compressed, that's where heat is going. Attic insulation is usually the best value per dollar of any envelope upgrade.

Water, roof and outside

• Disconnect and drain garden hoses and shut off outdoor faucets where you have interior shut-offs. A frozen hose bib can split a pipe inside the wall.
• Clear gutters and downspouts so meltwater drains away instead of refreezing at the eaves.
• Look at the roof from the ground for lifted, cracked or missing shingles. A roof that's already struggling will not improve under ice.
• Check that exhaust vents are clear. High-efficiency furnaces, water heaters and dryers vent through side walls, and drifting snow can block them. A blocked vent can shut the system down, or worse.

Comfort and safety

• Test smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and replace batteries. CO alarms have expiry dates, typically seven to ten years from manufacture; check the label.
• Set a thermostat schedule that matches when you're actually home. A programmable or smart thermostat pays for itself faster than almost any other device. If you heat with a heat pump, avoid deep setbacks, since recovering from a large drop can trigger backup heat.
• Watch indoor humidity. Very dry air feels colder and is hard on wood and skin; too much causes window condensation and mould. Somewhere around 30–40% relative humidity suits most homes in winter, lower when it's extremely cold outside.
• Reverse ceiling fans to push warm air down from the ceiling at low speed.

If your system is near the end of its life

Furnaces, air conditioners and water heaters tend to fail on the coldest or hottest day, when you have the least time to make a good decision. If your equipment is approaching fifteen years old, or you're already paying for repeated repairs, it's worth pricing a replacement while you can still compare options calmly, rather than choosing whatever can be installed tomorrow.