Keeping Warm

Take steps now to winterize your house inside and out

COLUMBIA BASIN — As perceptive observers may have noticed, the weather has recently changed. Here in the Basin, we’ve had our brief annual visit from fall and winter is now pounding at our door like a battering ram. Which means it’s time to seal up, wrap up and warm up the house. “One of the things obviously, when you're coming into the winter, is that people at home should definitely be checking all their air filters,” said Logan Hickle, a spokesman for the Better Business Bureau. “They should be checking their windows and their doors, making sure all the correct sealants are in place, if anything's cracking, getting that replaced, because that can one help keep you warm and to save on energy bills.” “When you're worried about winterization, the biggest issues are the pipes, and then things like insulation,” said McLain Fanning, general manager of Ace Hardware in Royal City. “Of course, it's nice to have a good space heater. But that's not worth all that much if you have all these cracks in your home, if there's any spaces where you can see daylight through like a door frame or a window, or sometimes people will put a hole in their garage to run an air compressor hose into their shop or something. If there's any place where air can freely travel, basically that makes it so you're heating the world instead of just your home.”