How to Winterize Your Home

Winterizing your home is a crucial part of annual home maintenance for any homeowner regardless of where you live in the country. Winterizing your home generally includes taking small preventative measures to protect your plumbing, heating/cooling, and exterior during the colder months of the year.

With over 30 years of property management experience, we know a thing or two about maintaining a home and it's property value. Below are some easy ways you can prepare your home for cold winter weather and keep things working order and avoid costly repairs in the spring.

Run Your Ceiling Fans in Reverse

Many homeowners don't realize it, but fans aren't just for cooling a room. They can also be used to push warm air down to floor level. Remember 5th-grade science class? Warm air rises and cold air falls. In the winter months, your ceiling fans can help keep that warm air where you need it most by running in reverse.

Run the fans in reverse

Change the direction to clockwise.

What direction is reverse on a ceiling fan? Clockwise.

Most ceiling fans have a switch allowing you to change the direction of the fan blades. This simple trick could save you up to 10% on your heating costs.

Use Door Draft Stoppers

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that drafts can waste 5 to 30 percent of a home's energy usage. You can buy door draft stoppers online or in a home improvement store, or if you're crafty, you can make one yourself.

How to make a DIY door draft stopper.

This is a simple and highly effective way to keep your house warmer and also may help keep your thermostat from incorrect readings if located near a drafty door or window.

Lower the Thermostat While You're Away

Lowering your thermostat just one degree will save you 1-3 percent of your heating bill. Most modern thermostats have a programming feature, make use of it. Lower the temperature while you are out of the house for work each day and overnight while you are sleeping. It has been said that a temperature between 60-67 degrees is ideal for a good night's sleep.

If you're feeling particularly tech-savvy upgrade your old thermostat to a modern, energy-efficient model which you can conveniently control from your smartphone and while you are away from home as well. Some gas providers will offer discounts and rebates for energy efficient equipment.

Seal Up the Leaks

Buy a few tubes of calk and some weatherstripping and start sealing up your windows and doors to head off any cold air leaks into your house. The US Department of Energy reports that air leaks in a home can lead to a 5-30% drop in home efficiency each year, that adds up on your heating and air conditioning bills.

Seal Any air leaks

Air leaks can drop home efficiency by up to 30%!

In addition to the obvious spots like windows and doors, have a look at areas like fireplaces and chimneys, areas where wires and piping exit the home, and all along the home's foundation.

Have Your Fireplace Cleaned & Inspected

Throughout the year birds and other animals can make their way into your chimney building nests and wreaking havoc on your fireplace system. Each year before lighting your first fire a thorough inspection and cleaning will protect you from potential fire damage and ensure your fireplace is working properly throughout the colder months.

 

Bring the Plants Indoors

To prevent your potted plants from dying over the winter it is recommended that you bring them indoors before temperatures drop below 45 degrees. It will certainly save you time and money come spring when you don't have to purchase and replant from new.

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Looking for more ways to winterize your home?

Download this home winterization checklist full of simple ways to protect your home over the winter.

What is the Role of a Property Management Company?

Property management companies are hired by HOAs to manage certain aspects of a community such as the enforcement of rules and regulations, collecting late payments and delinquent homeowner accounts and much more. Although these responsibilities are sometimes unpleasant, they are vital to running a successful community.

Property management companies are often misunderstood which leads to the confusion and frustration of many homeowners.

Here at Heritage Property Management, we like to shed some light on the role and responsibilities of a typical property management company. A community’s management structure can be broken down into three main components.

Three Parts of A Community’s Management Team

1. HOA Covenants & Bylaws
   Your home owner’s association (HOA) is governed by its own set of documents known as Covenants and Bylaws. These documents create the rules for the community in which you live.
    
2. Board of Directors
   If you live in an HOA community, odds are your community also has a Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is a group of volunteers who are also homeowners, just like you and are elected by the community to represent the total population of your neighborhood. They must adhere to the Bylaws and Covenants of the community.
    
3. Property Management Company
   Most HOA communities will hire a professional third-party company to handle the enforcement of their policies as laid out in their governing documents as well as other tasks such as collecting late payments and settling delinquent homeowner accounts, paperwork for new residents, coordinating with closing attorneys during the sale of a property, collecting bids for large projects within the community and/or sending out regular communications to the residents of the community.

Who Makes the Decisions in an HOA?

Many homeowners do not realize that all the important decisions for their community are made by the Board of Directors, not the property management company. The Board of Directors, in turn, is guided by the governing documents. 

For many homeowners, if an issue arises or they become unhappy with a decision that has been made, their first call might be to the property management company specifically the Property Manager assigned to their community. In most cases, the Property Manager is simply enforcing a rule or regulation outlined in the governing documents of the community and it is very unlikely that the property management company has control over what those rules and regulations state.
 

What is a Property Manager’s Role?

A Property Manager is generally assigned to each community to be the main point of contact for the homeowners and board members. This Property Manager can field complaints and direct them to the appropriate person(s) as well as explain any policies, procedures, and rules within the community.

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Collecting on late payments, reconciling delinquent accounts, and enforcing rules are not always fun or easy tasks. This is why many HOAs will hire a property management company to handle it on their behalf. These type of tasks are often met with disgruntled homeowners who may disagree with the rules or payments set forth by their communities.

Although these tasks have their challenges, at Heritage, we enjoy helping communities tackle both big and small hurdles because, at the end of the day without these crucial responsibilities, a community could face major difficulties. We also take pride in being a trusted partner to many hard-working volunteer board members who might otherwise be overwhelmed with the amount of work that goes into keeping a community in top shape with well-preserved home values.
 

A Good Analogy for Your HOA's Management Structure

A community’s management structure has some similarities to our own country’s democracy. Whereas the HOA Covenants and Bylaws function as a community constitution. The Board of Directors are elected officials representing the larger community. And the property management company is like the police, enforcing the rules set forth by the community.

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Learn More About What a Property Management Company Does

To fully understand what we do, along with the responsibilities your board is obligated to fulfill when they agree to hold a particular position, we have prepared a list of frequently asked questions which you can read on our Home Owner’s FAQ page.