Everyone knows it can get pretty cold in the winter in Illinois. Utility costs can be astounding sometimes, and back in February we had a post giving you tips on how to reduce your utility costs. But those were big ticket items. Sometimes it doesn’t take such drastic measures to help weatherize your home sufficiently enough to protect you, and if you do these 4 things they’ll help with the earlier recommendations to keep you comfortable during the winter months.
1. Find where air leaks around your doors and put weather stripping in those areas. Air tends to leak most at the top or bottom of a door, but obviously there are two other sides where air can come in. A smart thing to do that you don’t read about all that often is to put the weather stripping on both sides of the door if possible. As long as you can still close your door, the extra padding can only help.
2. Put plastic up around your windows. This one is traditional, but it helps keep out extra air that could be seeping in through your windows or around the windows. You need to know, though, that it won’t totally keep cold out of your house when it’s really cold, but at least it will contain the cold by keeping it close to the window instead of letting it spread everywhere.
3. If you have metal pipes in the basement, wrap towels or some other kind of fabric around them. Pipes not only can get cold and thus have the opportunity to get damaged, but when they get really cold and you’re not using them all that often they will help bring more cold into your house.
4. Make sure all your air vents are unencumbered and all your air returns are unblocked. Go from room to room and make sure you didn’t move something over the summer that you forgot blocks one of those vents. It probably wouldn’t hurt you to have someone come in to clean the vents and to test them to make sure as much air as possible is coming in through them.
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Mitch writes on real estate, finance, and many other things. 
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