Monthly Archives: April 2014

Taking Care of a Home Before Winter

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I feel at liberty to write a few sentences about the winter that is about to begin soon. I even feel like the winter has already begun as some mornings here can be really cold. There is no ice or snow here yet, but I expect to see more of it in the next few weeks when the real winter is about to begin.

One of the biggest challenges are frozen pipes. Frozen pipes can be a real pain especially during those winter days when temperatures are record low. It turns out though that some things can be done in order to prevent such things from happening. Let me write a few words about it now.

Preventing frozen pipes is important if you want to take care of your home, especially before winter. There are a few ways to deal with it and one way is to insulate pipes in your home’s crawl spaces and attic. This is one solution that many home owners decide to try and they succeed in it. You might not be able to do everything on your own as you will for sure need some help from a specialists to help you prevent your pipes from being frozen in winter. The reason you need this is that sometimes you might not be able to get where only a qualified plumber can get. I can understand why this can happen.

Even though winter has not started officially yet for many of you, I am sure that it is going to start soon. For some people, winters can be harsher than they are for other people. I wonder how harsh the coming winter is going to be. If you live in Canada or in one of those colder states, you might need to do something in order to make sure that you are ready for the winter. Have you checked your pipes already? Maybe they need more maintenance than you have thought they would need? Whatever you decide to do, remember that you still have some time to do everything you need in order to prevent your pipes from freezing during winter months.

Building a New Home

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Last year my wife and I decided that it was time to buy a home. We were getting tired of paying rent and another person’s mortgage.

When we started to look for our ideal home, we came across a lot of overpriced older homes in the area we wanted to live in. Our other option was to look for a piece of land and build our dream home.

That’s what we decided to do. This was exciting for both of us as we got to be the architects and design our dream home. With the help of a qualified builder, that is certainly a possibility.

When it came to heading the home, my wife wanted a nice natural gas fireplace. But that wasn’t going to heat the whole home and it was going to be expensive. She then suggested we use baseboards throughout the rest of the home to provide the heat. Sure that would be cheaper at the beginning but it would be expensive in the long run since our home was going to be pretty big.

That’s when I suggested we look at heat pumps as an alternative to baseboards and a natural gas fireplace. A heat pump would also use its reverse acting cycle to cool our home in the summer months. The temperatures don’t get super hot during our summers but it can cause some uncomfortable days and nights.

The heat pump would cost a bit more upfront but the energy used to power them was going to be less than the natural gas and baseboards.

My wife was on board. But she still wanted a fireplace as a design piece for the home.

Our general contractor suggested he build the fireplace but use fake wood and put glass over the front. That worked for both her and I and we did just that.

It’s now April and a full winter after leaving in our new home, I can say that the heat pump was a great idea. I’ve gone over all of the energy bills and operational costs where a big more than having a natural gas fireplace and baseboards.

In the long run, we’ll recoup that though as we now know how to operate the heat pump. With summer around the corner, I’m looking forward to being able to sleep at nights thanks to the heat pump extracting the heat from the home and pushing it outside.

I’m sure you’ll agree that sleeping in the summer is tough. An air conditioner is a good option but it’s inside the room and also very noisy. A heat pump is staged outside the home and very, very quiet.

So if you’re building a new home, be sure to look into buying a heat pump to cool and heat your home like we did.

Freezing Pipes in Winter

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I cannot believe that another winter is almost in full swing again. Soon we are going to celebrate Christmas, then there is going to be New Year, St. Valentine’s Day and many other joyous day to celebrate like birthdays of a few of my friends.

Winter might be a special time of year, but it does not mean that one should not be prepared for it. By being prepared for it I not only mean having warm gloves and hats prepared at all times. Being prepared for winter means more than just that and can include making sure that no pipes freeze in your home during all those days when it is freezing outside.

I remember one very cold winter when I was a child. I lived in a big house with many rooms. Our central heating system wasn’t top quality, and we were always wondering when it might stop working. My parents did not feel like replacing it since it sounded like a big investment at the time. We were about to move anyway soon so we knew that the inevitable would happen one day for sure. And it did happen. We needed to call our plumber the next day to fix everything for us. Luckily, the repairs did not cost that much after all and everything ended surprisingly well taking into account the shape of our central heating system.

Since I am an adult now and have total control over my home, during winter I like to ensure that the pipes in my house won�t freeze the way it happened to me when I was a child. If a person has central heating, then one reason why pipes may freeze is when the central heating is switched off completely. I never switch my central heating off. In the worst case, I switch it on in and set it to heat just a little. Heating just a little can already make a huge difference. It is important to make sure that there is hot water circulating in the pipes and nobody should forget about this important fact.