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Winter is coming: preparing your Brunswick home for the chilly season

By Jamil Allouche

With the first of Winter's drafts rolling in, now is the time to take a look around your property in Brunswick and see what preparations can be made to keep the cold air and high bills out of your home.

Turn the temperature down

Water heaters are often set to 60 degrees Celsius during installation according to the Public Health Association. It's an unnecessary temperature for two reasons – firstly, you don't want to get scolded on those early mornings. Secondly, you're paying for it. According to the government energy rating initiative, heating your hot water accounts for about 25 per cent of your annual energy use. Reducing your water heater's settings by 10-12 degrees can add up to significant savings on your yearly energy spend.

Check your ducts

This is an important practise in your pre-winter preparations. Check the seams of your heating ducts – this is where a large part of that vital heat will disperse. Likewise, it's worthwhile checking around window frames and other areas of the home where contrasting materials join.

A simple DIY method of checking for gaps: light an incense stick and run it slowly around the joins – if the smoke wavers, you have a leak. Problem areas should be caulked to avoid undue loss of warm air, or worse, unwelcome entry of water into your home.

Draft snakes

While we wouldn't normally advocate having snakes inside your house, their usefulness against chilly winds in the colder months cannot be denied. A draft snake (or, if you prefer, a draft stopper) offers a cheap and reliable means of keeping the cold out.

Why not charge the kids with the task of making their own? It's unknown whether the addition of googly eyes to your draft snake will keep the house any warmer, but modern science is yet to prove the opposite.

Turn off unused appliances

A great rule of thumb for keeping your energy bill down during winter is by turning off unused appliances. Even keeping devices on standby can contribute to greater annual power costs. In the interest of savings, why not turn off appliances overnight or while you're at work? How often do you really use that clock on the microwave?

Save some cash on your energy bill and keep warm all winter long, what's not to love? For more information about real estate in Brunswick, contact our expert team today.

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