Preparing Your Home For Winter

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It's always best to prepare your home for the winter weather, so take a look at what Cleveland Heights resident Nolan Andersky suggests in this Cleveland Heights Patch article:

1. If you have a yard, you probably have garden beds, so you probably have flowers, and if you don’t have a personal gardener to water the flowers, you probably have a hose to water those flowers. Make sure you drain all of the hoses, and bring them into the garage. Hoses are meant to have water in the them. When they do, the water gets cold, freezes, and can crack the hoses. Very easy to do, takes 10 minutes tops. But it’s a must in preparing for winter.
2. Windows, more importantly the screens. Unless you have casement windows (the windows that have the screens on the inside, in which the windows open like a door out of the frame), you probably have single-hung or double-hung windows in which the screens are completely exposed to the elements. Screens are put on windows to keep bugs out when you open the windows. Water is not one of the things a screen can filter out of your home. In winter, we don’t really open our windows, so we are good there. Taking the screens off of the windows are a great way to keep the screens in better shape. When it snows, some snow will get stuck between the window and the screen, when it melts it turns to water, when it gets cold again, it freezes and expands. That is not good for the screens at all! So take them off, store them in the garage or shed. Also, this gives you a good reason while spring cleaning to clean the screens as well. Two pluses out of that tip.

Read more at The Cleveland Heights Patch