Tips for Keeping Your House Warm

Another simple way to keep your house warmer is to close the curtains at night. If you don't have curtains on your windows and extreme weather is predicted you can even hang blankets or sheets over the windows to help keep in the heat.

Once the sun comes up you will want to open the curtains to let in the light and if the sun is shining, even on extremely cold days, it will help to heat your rooms.

Heavier curtains will help to retain more heat. Consider adding a blanket to a window with sheer curtains until the cold snap breaks.

A rolled up towel works wonders at keeping drafts from coming in at the bottom of doors.

Years ago when I worked at New England Solar Energy Association we sold what were then called Draft Dodgers. These were taken from an old New England tradition of rolling up old towels and sliding them up against any doors where you could feel a draft coming in. 

Usually these towels are placed in front of outside doors but sometimes, it you have rooms that are not heated, you may find that it makes sense to place a towel in front of that door as well.

I keep my winter coat hung on the front door doorknob in order to keep some of the cold air from coming in along the side of the door.

Rugs on the floor will help to keep rooms warmer and feel warmer on your feet. Move rugs from rooms you are not using into your main living area to keep that room warmer until the outside temperatures rise.

Having your floors covered in rugs will insulate the room from cold air below and keep your feet warmer. Don't forget to put on heavy socks or two pairs of socks and slippers. Keeping your feet warm will help you keep the rest of your body warm.

If you notice drafts coming in near the edge of the room where the floor meets the walls, rugs can be pushed up against them to keep out cold air there as well.

The biggest danger when the temperature drops well below freezing is freezing pipes. When water freezes it expands and can burst your pipes. 

The first thing I do to protect my water pipes from freezing is to open the cabinet doors. Then I go to the refrigerator and take out the thermometer that I keep there to make sure that the refrigerator is working at the right temperature. 

I put the refrigerator thermometer under the sink near the water pipes as they go down under the floorboards. This lets me know if the temperature is getting dangerously low to the point where I need to go to step two.

If the temperature is getting below 40 I start running the water every hour. I run it until the hot water feels good and hot. Then I run the cold water as well to make sure that it is still flowing normally. 

Every hour I check the temperature. If it is getting close to 32 I begin running the water in the pipes. It doesn't need to be full blast. Just keep it running a little. That should keep them from freezing.

You might think that running a space heater near these pipes would help but the problem is not in the cabinet but rather in the space under the floors where the temperatures get colder still. Only heating your basement or cellar would help here. 

If your pipes do begin to freeze you will notice that the water doesn't flow well. Just keep running the water and the water that runs through will begin to melt the ice. 

If no water comes through you will know that somewhere the water in the pipe has frozen. 

Locate the place where the pipe has frozen and use a hair dryer or heating pad to warm the pipe until the water begins to flow again.

DO NOT USE open flames or blow torches to thaw out frozen pipes. Doing this is one of the main causes of house fires.

My cellar has a stone foundation with a dirt floor. Plenty of holes for drafty cold air to come in.

When I first moved into the house you could see daylight through all the holes between the rocks and feel the draft blowing in with your wrist when held up to most any spot along the edge of the cellar walls. 

I bought some pink fiberglass insulation, the kind that comes in rolls, to put in the attic. I had some left over so I put on some gloves (Fiberglass insulation is very itchy) and started pulling off tufts of it to stuff into all the cracks. On sunny days it was easy to see many of the holes but I also used my wrist to find others. 

Close off as many rooms as possible so that you only have to really heat a small area. 

My house has 13 rooms including 8 bedrooms. I love having all that space most of the year but when it gets extremely cold I begin to shut off sections that I don't really need. 

I close the doors and place towels at the bottom of the doors to keep the cold from drifting across the floor. 

I also close off all the upstairs bedrooms. There are old stovepipe holes that go from the first floor to the second floor that help to let heat up to those rooms when someone is staying there but if no one is visiting I cover those holes with rugs, shut the doors and close the doors to the stairway. 

I could sleep upstairs all year long the way we did when I was a child but I like to be a bit warmer so I move downstairs so that there is no need to go upstairs at all.

Shrinking the size of your house means that you won't have to heat as much and thus it will be easier to keep your house warm.

Another way to stay warm on cold nights is to use curtains or heavy blankets to create a warm space around yourself as you sleep. 

• Set up your four poster bed
• Make pockets for rope to be threaded through along the edges of five heavy blankets.
• Push clothesline or other rope through each of the hemmed edges you have created.
• Tie the clothesline to each of the four posters.
• The fifth blanket gets pockets on each of the edges and is used to create a ceiling for your bed.

Here are some quick and easy tips for keeping your house warm when extreme cold hits your ares:

• Make sure that all doors and windows are closed
• Rolled Towels under doors
• Cardboard pieces to Hold Loose Windows 
• Close off unused rooms
• Open cabinet doors to keep pipes from freezing
• Use your wrist to feel for drafts
• Stuff bits of insulation in holes in the cellar