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How To Winterize Your Home Before Vacation
How To Winterize Your Home Before Vacation
Posted: November 22, 2021
Before you head off on any kind of vacation, there is always a lot to do. You have to pack, organize the house, make arrangements for your pets and find someone to collect your mail. Winterizing your home before you head out of town should be added to this to-do list.
Vacation Prep Checklist
Winterizing your home before a vacation keeps your home safe and secure while you are gone. How exactly do you winterize your house? Follow the below five steps to properly prepare so that your home is issue-free upon your return.
Seal up all your doors and windows. This gives your house a little extra insulation. If you want an additional layer of warmth and insulation, add storm windows.
Even though you won’t be home, you don’t want to shut off your heat completely. You actually want to leave your thermostat on and set it to about 55 degrees. If you leave your thermostat completely off, you increase the chances of your pipes freezing. You should also leave your kitchen cabinets open. This allows heat to travel to the pipes that are located in these cabinets.
Before you leave on vacation, go through your home and make sure all your appliances are unplugged. Just because you’re not using an appliance doesn’t mean they’re not using energy and costing money (these kinds of appliances are referred to as “vampire” appliances). Additionally, if there is a power outage you’ll be better off if appliances are unplugged as you’ll be protected from surging or, even worse, a fire.
Shutting the flue to your fireplace traps the heat that is traveling through your home and keeps it in your house. Therefore, your house stays warmer while you’re gone. Additionally, a closed flue keeps rain, snow, and live animals from getting into your home.
Please make sure you contact Vaughn Oil before your vacation to adjust your automatic heating oil delivery schedule. That way you are not paying for any deliveries you don’t need.
We can help your Rhode Island home stay warm all winter long. Contact us today for information on heating oil services, heating oil prices or to set up automatic heating oil deliveries.
Before you head off on any kind of vacation, there is always a lot to do. You have to pack, organize the house, make arrangements for your pets and find someone to collect your mail. Winterizing your home before you head out of town should be added to this to-do list.