Homes and Real Estate
6
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
6 things to do before a Fairbanks winter closes in By PHIL RINGSTAD
W
inter is coming to Alaska. What’s the key to thriving — and not just surviving — during an Alaska winter? With our extreme winters can come extreme disasters to our homes. Homeowners can face house freeze-ups, pipes freezing and bursting, chimney fires, boiler and fur-
nace malfunctions that could blow soot throughout a home. Preparation cannot prevent all emergencies but it can help significantly. Here are six suggestions to make your winter more comfortable and to help ensure the transition into next spring goes smoothly. 1. Have a licensed technician clean and service your boiler or furnace. This should
be done annually and now, before it gets cold, is a perfect time. Technicians will have to turn your boiler off while servicing it and waiting until temperatures fall to minus 20 can leave you with a cold house and extra work on the system to get back up to temperature. Servicing your boiler or furnace will help ensure your system is operating at peak efficiency and is in good condition to get you through the winter without any emergency repairs, or worse, a frozen home from a breakdown, which can cause thousands of dollars in damages. 2. Hire a chimney sweep and clean your woodstove/fireplace chimney. I have our boiler stack and woodstove chimney cleaned once a year. If you’re burning wood as a source of heat, make sure to only burn seasoned wood to prevent creosote from building in the stack. If creosote is built up in sufficient quantities it could ignite inside the chimney, resulting in a volcanic chimney fire. I have seen too many chimney fires through the years that could have been prevented with annual cleaning. 3. Turn off all exterior spigots, and blow or drain the lines. These pipes can freeze, expand and split open. By
failed septic system in the winter is difficult and expensive. The best time to clean your tank is summer and early fall, as the ground will not be frozen and biological activity in the tank can re-establish itself before it gets too cold. We often find the spring brings septic backups, which are cause by a high water table caused by melted snow that can create pressure on the bottom of the tank and push the sludge from the tank back into the house. 6. Weatherproof your home. Now is the time to seal up Phil Ringstad those areas around entryways, garage doors and windows, and add insulation in your turning off the water to the attic and crawl space. You spigots and draining the line, may consider signing up for a you prevent that pipe from bursting and potentially drain- home energy audit, which may ing water into your basement. allow a rebate for some of the upgrades that you make. 4. Clean out your gutters Properly preparing your and downspouts. You may be surprised to see how much home for the rigors of a Fairstuff can accumulate in one banks winter, you can worry season. You can prevent ice less and instead enjoy all dams building up in the spring that Fairbanks offers for cold and causing damage to your weather fun. Phil Ringstad of Ringstad Carpet home. & Restoration can help with any 5. Clean out your septic questions you may have. Call him at tank. Regular cleaning can Ringstad Restoration is prolong the life of your system 458-8304. the preferred vendor for water, fire and a septic tank with too and smoke loss with major insurmuch sludge can cause probance companies and can help you if lems in the winter. Fixing a your home has flooded, frozen up or has had smoke damage.