How to Winterize Your Home: Tips Straight From a Home Maintenance Pro

Winter is upon us. At Imagine Homes, we believe that our residents deserve to feel safe, warm and worry-free in their homes. We reached out to Martin Loop, Imagine Homes’ resident Maintenance Manager, to compile helpful insights on property maintenance—from winterizing to changing thermostat batteries—so you can better enjoy the winter season.

Here are some tips straight from an expert:

Know when and how to winterize your home.

As someone who lives in Minnesota, learning how to winterize your home is a must. Ideally, the latest you should start winterizing your home is October—especially before the “freeze date”.

I recently had to assist a resident with a flood in their home. The resident left the country for four months and turned their heat off. They wound up with several frozen pipes.

Believe it or not, this happens a lot, even when I was in multifamily housing. You’d be surprised how many floods were caused by people trying to save on their heating bill!

If you’re going to leave your home unattended for a long time, shut down your water main. This will lessen the likelihood of flooding in your home. You can also pour RV antifreeze down each drain to help keep your drain pipes from freezing.

PRO TIP: Don’t turn your heat off when going on vacation to save on energy costs. Instead, turn off your water main and pour RV antifreeze down each drain.

Leaving your heat on in winter is critical. If you’re looking to save on energy costs, one of the best ways to keep heat in your home is to open the blinds and curtains during the day. This enables you to make use of the sun’s heat to keep your home warm while helping you reduce moisture on your floors, walls, and windows.

Speaking of windows—keep them shut throughout winter when the temperature outdoors is below freezing. Open them on warmer days to help with moisture and air quality control.

If you find that there seems to be a leak in your windows, use winterizing kits—these usually contain a sheet of plastic that you can put along the window and shrink tight with a blow dryer. It makes a huge difference on your heating bill. The one downside is that you will not be able to open your windows while this plastic is in place.

PRO TIP: Keep your thermometer set to at least 65 degrees and open your blinds and curtains during the day in winter. Keep windows shut when temps are below freezing and open on warmer days. Use window winterizing kits to stop air leaks.

Take preemptive measures for winter.

We get a lot of snow in Minnesota, so being prepared for snow is ingrained in me. You should have at least four bags of ice melt in stock because during a bad storm, there won’t be any available in stores to buy. Just like the toilet paper was scarce during COVID, the same thing happens with salt.

A good rule of thumb is to always have a good supply. Buy it when you don’t need it, so you have it when you do. It’s also a good idea to carry a bag in your car trunk—it could come in handy when you need to get out of a “slippery slope”.

Starting the season out, you should check your snowblower. Do your oil changes, make sure it runs properly and starts easily. Keep it in a warm environment instead of a cold shed. Otherwise, it can be impossible to start.

PRO TIP: Keep 4 bags of ice melt on hand before bad storms strike. Check your snowblower for proper functioning before winter sets in and keep it in a warm environment so it starts easy.

If you have storm doors and windows, put them on as early as possible. Some houses have storm windows where you can put them on from the outside. Same thing with storm doors. Mine has glass you can take out for the summer and put back in winter. This helps to keep your home insulated from the cold weather outside.

For homes that have a stairwell leading to an exterior lower level on a hill beware of snow drift. The snow can drift into that stairwell and bury it. One way to prevent drifts is to install snow fences.

PRO TIP: Put storm doors and windows on as early as possible. Install snow fences to prevent snow drifts from burying portions of your home.

Gutter cleaning is another crucial step in winterizing. If you don’t clean your gutters, snow will accumulate and eventually melt during warm days and freeze again when it gets colder potentially leading to ice damming and serious roof damage. So, always clean your gutters before winter.

Make sure to change the filters of your heating and air conditioning systems. For heaters, a lack of airflow can cause them to run much hotter than the limit of your equipment. A clogged filter can also cause your air conditioning unit to freeze up in the summer.

PRO TIP: Always clean your gutters and change the filters on your heating and air conditioning systems prior to winter.

Be mindful of your plumbing.

For starters, a lot of people tend to overestimate the amount of food you can throw down the garbage disposal.

It’s best to scrape off your leftover food from your plate as best as you can and throw it straight into the garbage. As much as possible, keep the grease you throw into your disposal or sink at a minimum. Otherwise, you will plug it up.

There are chemicals people use to unclog their drains but those are actually very dangerous. If they don’t work and someone has to work on your plumbing, they might be exposed to highly corrosive and harmful chemicals.

If you read the label on a bottle of “liquid plumber”, they tell you to cover the drain with a cup because it can be explosive and blow back in your face. The safety precautions on those bottles tells you why you don’t want to use them.

The best way to take care of your plumbing is to take preemptive steps to prevent clogs from happening in the first place. Install drain covers to catch hair in your sink, bathtub, or shower. If you don’t have access to drain covers, try unclogging your bathtub at least every two weeks using tools available on the market that you can use to pull hair out of the drain.

Another thing you can use is the “pop up” in your bathroom sink. A lot of people don’t use them and remove them resulting in hair ending up in the pipe requiring the use of a drain snake in order to clean it out. The pop up catches the hair. All you have to do is take off your pop up, clean it off, and then put it back in. Many videos are available online to help you through this process.

PRO TIP: Scrape leftover food into the garbage not into your garbage disposal. Prevent clogs using drain covers and the ‘pop up’ in your bathroom sink.

Be proactive when trying to avoid any maintenance headaches.

As a resident, there are simple things you can do to prevent having to wait for maintenance to come fix the problem—a lot of that involves learning. I always tell my residents if they don’t know how to fix an issue, they can call me. I always advise other maintenance personnel to educate their residents so they don’t feel helpless in an emergency.

For example, replacing thermostat batteries: if they don’t do it, they might wake up in the middle of the night with no heat. They’ll have to call maintenance for help which could take a few hours and they’ll be freezing.

PRO TIP: Keep spare batteries on hand in case you need to replace the batteries in your thermostat in the middle of the night.

Everybody loves to learn if you’re teaching them politely. Don’t blame them for clogging up the pipe and make it look like it’s their fault or make them feel bad about it. Teach them how or why they should or shouldn’t do something.

Residents today are lucky to have YouTube. We never had that when I first started in this business, so it was a matter of me going in and showing the resident hands on.

YouTube can be a resident’s best friend if it’s not something they want to wait on. However, they should never try to work on anything dangerous like electrical. For everything else including those items listed as their responsibility in their lease,there are many routes to learn how to do things like YouTube.

But for maintenance personnel, my advice to them is to educate the residents while they’re there in the home. Teach them about the house like what a GFCI does, what its purpose is and how to reset it.

Educating residents on how to do preventive maintenance that is within their capabilities makes a huge difference, not only in resident satisfaction, but in how many work orders they submit. That’s part of preventative maintenance and goes a long way toward delivering an exceptional experience to each and every resident.

Experience all of the benefits and advantages of homeownership.

We don’t just want you to rent from us. We want you to stay with us. Making you feel at home is everything—that includes equipping you with everything you need to care for your new home.

If you found these Winterizing Tips helpful, learn more about Resident Benefits over at our Resources page today.

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