GREENWOOD, Ind. — There are precautions you should take around your house now to prevent potential damage when the winter storm hits later this week.
Inside, in the next day or two, handyman Gus Bryan with Residential Repair Services suggests some common sense checks: change your furnace filter, for example, so the system doesn't work harder than it has to while heating your home.
"Check when it was installed and the shape that it's in," Bryan said. "It should be white and your furnace is going to run efficiently and well."
As the storm approaches, consider turning faucets to have a constant drip and open cabinet doors that are near outside walls to warm up water pipes.
"Any cabinet, whether it's a bathroom, kitchen, laundry room, anything that's on an outside wall needs to have the cabinet doors opened," Bryan explained. "I would open these up Wednesday night. You may have a little draft coming around where the pipes go through the wall and the insulation from the outside to the inside. You may have a cold draft coming in and that'll keep this area warmer and keep it from freezing."
Also make sure all your home's windows are locked and well-sealed, leave your heat no lower than 55 and close foundation vents.
Outside, after heavy snow or ice, you want to avoid nightmare scenarios that could cause serious damage to your home, such as icy tree limbs hitting the house.
So Bryan recommends checking your yard now.
Do a walkaround your trees, especially those that are close to your house, and remove any loose tree branches that could ice up and cause damage.
"If you had a tree that was overhanging your house, you'd want those sticks and branches away from there. You're going to have ice on all this stuff," he explained, "and that'll probably come down."
You also want sticks and leaves out of your gutters and downspouts. Clear those out Tuesday before the storm, to avoid ice dams. Those are the result of freeze-and-thaw with snow on the roof. They can cause major, costly damage.
"If you don't have your gutters clear and they freeze, then that water and snow backs up and it goes up into the shingles and then it rains inside your house," Bryan said. "I have seen ice dams in action where it's literally raining inside the house because there's so much snow melting, filling the gutters, coming back up and coming inside the house."
Finally, you'll no doubt have company, but in the next couple days, get to the store and buy some ice melt.
Bryan recommends that over salt because salt can damage concrete on your driveway.
He suggests putting that down right when the snow starts to fall, so sidewalks and walkways don't develop patches of ice.
