7 ways to get your home and garden ready for winter

It’ll be easier to be snug as a bug in a rug when the days get shorter and the cold weather descends if you’ve taken some action to winterize the house and garden. Here are seven things to do to get ready for winter.

Tune up the furnace

To be sure that your furnace will turn on when you need it, that it’s safe from carbon monoxide poisoning and that you save as much money as possible on your natural-gas bill, get a tuneup, says Wayne Gile of Dan’s Heating & Cooling.

“If we can clean it, it’s like doing a tuneup on your car,” Gile says. “We make sure the air and gas is mixing properly so you’re getting the maximum efficiency out of the furnace you’ve got.” The cost is $97.50, he says. He knows a woman who already had to call because her furnace did not come on; basically it needed to be cleaned up, he says.

Also make sure the furnace filter is clean and change it regularly, he says.

“That’s probably the biggest thing we find on emergency calls is a plugged-up filter that will make the furnace trip the limit switch to avoid letting it get too hot,” Gile says. That safety feature means that the furnace doesn’t turn on.

There are still some houses that have floor furnaces, and people should be sure they’ve removed any carpets or other coverings they may have put over the furnaces during the summer, Gile says.

Keep critters, cold air out

Button up the house to keep the cold winds out, as well as any critters such as mice that would like to come in, keep warm, eat your food and drink your water.

“People are trying to seal everything and become more energy efficient,” says Zach Vinduska of Handyman Matters in Wichita.

Here are some ways to do both:

▪ Put a good weather seal on the bottom of the garage door and keep the door closed as much as possible because that’s the main place mice enter. Make sure other doors as well as windows, including those in the basement, are snug, too.

Use caulk, steel wool or copper mesh that doesn’t rust to plug up holes, cracks, crevices and spaces that give entry into the house. These can include places where pipes enter the house and around air-conditioning lines, gas lines, electrical conduits, or shifting or rotted siding.

▪ Remove vegetation from around the foundation of the house and store firewood and other organic matter far from the house. This is also a good excuse to clear up clutter around the house. Clean clothing before storing it, and stack storage boxes several inches from the wall and from other stacks.

▪ Don’t leave dog or cat food out, indoors or outdoors. Store it in a metal container with a tight-fitting lid. Same for birdfeed. Water left out overnight also can be an invitation.

Keep your own food tightly sealed or refrigerate it. Clean up spills immediately. Cleaning the whole house often will help you catch any problems early.

Clear the leaves

Leaves have already started falling, and soon they will become a carpet on lawns. You want to be sure that a thick covering of leaves doesn’t sit on the grass for an extended period because the plants need the sun to make carbohydrates through the winter, Ward Upham of K-State says in this week’s Horticulture 2015 newsletter.

An easy way to do this is to keep the lawnmower handy, and mow the leaves before they get too thick – while you can still see grass peeking through the them, Upham says. Don’t bag the leaves – unless you want to carry them off to a compost pile – but let them break down right on the grass. Mow as often as necessary to avoid thick carpets of leaves.

Leaves can also be raked to areas where you don’t have plants growing or where you’d like to kill out some grass.

Also in the garden, before the weather turns frigid, drain and put away hoses so that water doesn’t freeze inside. Don’t put them too far away, though; if the winter is dry, plan to water on warm days.

Clean the gutters

All those leaves don’t go just on the ground. The gutters can get clogged pretty quickly. Ice dams can form over the winter; wood can rot, Vinduska says.

Some people buy gutter guards in an attempt to avoid gutter cleaning. But be leery of any product that says you’ll never have to clean your gutters again, Angie Hicks of Angie’s List says in her column this week. Even with the best of them, expect to clean at least every two years, and more often if trees are near the roof, Hicks says.

The best gutter covers are the micro-mesh style of surgical stainless steel, which cost around $18 to $20 for the best material, while lower grades start at around $5, Hicks quotes experts as saying. Guards that look like chicken wire or a flat colander help but can easily overflow, she says.

Cleaning under gutter guards is best left to a professional, who can take them off and re-install them after cleaning, Hicks says. The cost of having your gutters cleaned runs around $75 to $225 depending on the size of the house and should include a check of the downspouts, she says.

Winterize the mower

Mow your lawn for the last time of the season so that it is not too tall (it can get matted down, increasing its chances for disease) or too low. Fescue should be 3 to 3 1/2 inches, Bermuda and zoysia at about 2 inches, and buffalo at 2 to 3 inches.

Once you’re done mowing the grass – or the leaves on the grass – winterize the lawnmower so that it will be good to go in the spring. Upham of K-State has these pointers:

▪ For gasoline-powered engines, drain the gas tank or use a gasoline stabilizer to keep gasoline from getting thick and gunky. Remove the spark plug and squirt a few drops of oil inside the spark plug hole to help lubricate the cylinder. Replace the spark plug with a new one.

▪ If your lawnmower has a battery, clean the battery terminals to remove any corrosion. A wire-bristle brush works well. Then remove battery to a protected location for the winter (a cool basement is best), or connect it to a battery monitor to keep it charged over winter.

▪ Have the mower blade sharpened or sharpen it yourself. First check for major damage; if it can’t be fixed, you’ll need a new blade. Remove grass and debris from the blade with a moist cloth and then dry the blade. Remove nicks from the edge, using a grinding wheel to match the existing edge angle to the wheel or a hand-file, filing at the same angle as the existing edge. Grind or file until the edge is 1/32 inch, about the size of a period. Avoid overheating the blade to keep it from warping. Clean the blade with solvent or oil, much like cleaning a gun, for optimum winter storage. Using water will promote rust.

Order more firewood

If you plan to have a wood-burning fireplace going, hopefully your fireplace has already had its annual inspection to be sure it’s safe and in working order (check the website of the National Chimney Sweeping Guild, www.ncsg.org, for more information). And then be sure you have enough wood.

“I always tell people to buy more than what they think they’ll need,” says Andy Quandt of Woodchuck Firewood in Valley Center. “If an ice storm hits and you don’t have electricity for a week, a truckload won’t be enough.” And if you don’t end up needing as much as you buy, hardwood that’s not already too old can last two to three years after purchase, he says. “Buying more is always better.”

Handyman chores

While some people can take care of many of the necessaries around the house, a handyman can do a variety of things that might not otherwise get taken care of.

“We get a lot of calls to replace caulking around windows and doors and to replace weather stripping on windows and doors, even to do minor things: to replace furnace filters,” says Vinduska of Handyman Matters. “… We’ve even had calls to move pots inside for people, all the little things getting ready for winter, making things more weather-tight.”

He also recommends being sure exterior steps and hand railings are in good repair and secure so that when the weather turns icy, pedestrians will have more secure footing.

Other handyman projects that people like to have done this time of year include resealing the deck while the outdoor furniture is off it and before ice and snow sit on it all winter, and reglazing the glass on single-pane windows, Vinduska says.

This story was originally published October 22, 2015 at 5:29 PM with the headline "7 ways to get your home and garden ready for winter."