Transitioning out of the warmer summer months and preparing our living spaces for the chilly season takes considerable planning. Although these tasks can make for busy fall weekends, they are important to maintaining your home and setting yourself up for a warm and comfortable winter season. If you are a homeowner in New York, here are some quick and easy tips to help you prepare your home for fall.
Checklist to Help You Prepare Your Home for Fall
Reverse the Direction of Your Ceiling Fan
In the chilly fall and winter seasons, warm air rises up to the ceiling, while cool air remains close to the ground. However, homeowners can force cool air upwards and push the warmer air down by reversing the direction of their ceiling fan. Keeping the warm air towards the floor will ensure that the home’s occupants can enjoy a cozy interior when it’s cold outside.
Almost every ceiling fan comes with a switch on the motor housing that can change the standard or counter-clockwise movement of the blades and vice versa. Check your fan for a reverse-direction setting and switch it from summer to winter mode. Press it once and check to confirm whether the direction reverses or not.
Clean Your Gutters
Another way to prepare your home for fall is to ensure your gutters are clean and working correctly. Since gutters are responsible for draining thousands of gallons of water every year, they could use some cleaning before the winter season. Regularly cleaning debris out of our gutters is especially important if your home has tall trees surrounding it. When the trees drop their leaves in the fall, gutters often become clogged, resulting in drainage problems.
Overflowing rain gutters can cause costly water damage to the foundation and basement of your home. Make sure you clear out any branches, leaves, or debris so your gutters are clean and can drain excess water off your roof and away from your home.
Check Your Electrics
Make sure the plug sockets of your home’s outlets are not damaged. You may notice scorch marks around sockets, which may indicate an electrical problem. A block tester is a simple device that checks whether a switch is working. Use it to check for common outlet wiring issues, and call a professional electrician to fix any electrical problems in your home.
Change Your Air Filters
If you’re preparing your home for fall, it may be a good time to check on your air filters. Over the course of a year, your furnace filter can clog up with dust, hair, and other debris. Hence, the furnace will have to work harder and will become less efficient. Clean or change your air filter every four to six weeks, depending on your filter type and the needs of your home. For example, people with allergies, asthma, and pets may need to change their filters more frequently to keep them performing optimally.
Invest in Safety and Security Window Film for Peace of Mind
We know that it gets darker earlier in the fall and even earlier still in the winter season. If you’re concerned about securing your home against break-in attempts, or even severe weather, a security window film can bring enhanced safety and peace of mind.
Installing a safety and security film makes your home’s existing windows more protective. Not only can the scratch-resistant coating withstand exterior exposure, but it also deters theft by holding glass together in a cohesive sheet even when broken by impact. An additional benefit of this technology is that there are no flying glass shards if your windows shatter during a natural disaster or catastrophe. This keeps occupants safe from potential injury caused by broken glass.
Invest in Low-E Window Film for Improved Insulation & Comfort
Most of us love the sun warming our living room through the windows, especially when fall brings a chill to the outside air. However, we rarely realize the harm that sunlight through windows can cause.
UV rays can fade your home’s floorings and furnishings, and the solar glare may make it uncomfortable for the occupants.A sun control window film or low E-film is a thin plastic layer installed on the interior surface of your existing windows to make your home more comfortable, private, and safe in the fall season, and all year round. Low-E film also saves energy as it improves the insulating abilities of your home windows. It blocks the sun’s heat from passing through the glass in the summer, and traps the heat generated by your HVAC system inside in the winter. This brings year-round energy savings.
Get in Touch with Us!
Do you want to learn more about saving on energy bills, enhancing the comfort to your home, or and adding more security to your vulnerable windows?
When you want to prepare your home for fall, contact New York Window Film. We provide simple and effective solutions to elevate your home’s comfort while allowing for privacy and safety.
New York Window Film provides high-quality products and window film installations to Metropolitan New York, Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut. With window film solutions for both residential and commercial spaces, our products can help you achieve anything from sun control and security to decorative enhancement and privacy. Call us at (631) 420-4101 or (212) 256-1414 for more information, or request a quote online.