Your Guide to a Snug and Safe Winter Season

Prepare to transform your winter routine with essential safety tips that keep your home both cozy and efficient. Ever wondered how to keep your energy bills from skyrocketing during the colder months? Discover practical strategies for winterizing your home, ensuring warmth without waste, and maintaining a safe environment. From inspecting your roof to insulating outdoor pipes and using the right heating equipment, we cover every angle to ensure you’re ready for whatever winter throws your way.

Join me, Esther Kane, as we tackle critical winter safety topics that everyone should consider, not just older adults. Learn why inspecting your furnace and sealing exterior cracks can make a significant difference in your home's comfort and safety. Embrace the peace of mind that comes with being prepared for sudden winter storms and prevent common hazards like falls and burst pipes. So, as you sip your tea and listen along, let’s make this winter season safer and more comfortable for all.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:33

Hey everyone, welcome back to another podcast from Aging in Place Directory. I'm Esther Kane, your host Today, I thought, since it's October and we're heading into well, most of the country is heading into winter or some form of winter, although I hear that this winter is going to be warmer than others, but we'll see. But I still thought it would be important to talk about some winter safety tips, because now is the time to start preparing for that, not during a winter storm. So we're going to be talking about some things like winterizing your home, heating safety, and then fall prevention and and emergency preparedness. I mean, those are four main issues that I think, personally, everyone should be concerned about, not just older adults. All right, so let's talk about winterizing your home. If you're living in a house, or even a condo or apartment, townhouse, anything like that, you, you want to talk, you want to think about winterizing it, making sure that it captures and keeps the heat as much as possible, so that you don't have to run the heater on. For you know, extensively though you build, your gas bill or electric bill is not so high. So the very first thing is, you want to make sure that your roof doesn't have any missing your build, your gas bill or electric bill is not so high. So the very first thing is you want to make sure that your roof doesn't have any missing shingles that could leak when snow melts. Now, if you've had any leakage at all, then obviously you know that it needs to get fixed. So don't wait for that to get worse. You want to fix it as soon as possible and I'm not telling you to get up on your roof and do it. Hire a professional, a handyman, whomever can come in and do that for you. I do not recommend really anyone to get up on their roof to do it. Sorry, I still have that cold that I'm dealing with.

Speaker 1: 2:35

You want to insulate your pipes, especially, of course, ideally the pipes that are exposed outdoors, and I'm talking about the outdoor pipes. If you have sprinkler pipes or you know pipes that are up along your wall that go up to your faucets outdoor faucets you want to cover those faucets appropriately, and foam pipe insulation is the most common and it usually works extremely well. A lot of us that have garages, we have pipes in the garages. You want to make sure that those are insulated as much as possible. If you have pipes that you know are behind any cabinetry, like cabinetry in your garage or cabinetry in your kitchen. You want to open those cabinet doors when it gets extremely cold and I'm talking about just around freezing or below and that will help to the heat from your home, will help to keep those pipes from freezing and bursting.

Speaker 1: 3:40

You want to seal any cracks in your home's exteriors to keep out the cold air, and I personally used a silicone sealant. I had my handyman do that for me, went around the house. Everywhere that there seemed to be a little crack, we used a. He used a silicone sealant and the reason I like that is because when it's applied appropriately, it'll last up to 20 years. So I'm talking about around doors, around windows, especially around the corners areas, places where pipes and wires enter your home, vents for exhaust fans, cracks in porches and stoops. One area you want to look at is underneath your bathroom sinks and around the toilet areas. Sometimes when they put in those pipes on those walls, they leave a gap there. You want to make sure that that is sealed so that heat it doesn't escape into in there and you end up paying more money. You can use underdoor draft stoppers if and where that's needed to help keep cool air out and to help keep the heat in. Keep the heat in. As far as heating safety, you want to avoid using your oven as a heater. That is not meant to do that. If you find that you have to do that, then you want to get yourself an appropriate portable heater that has a timer on it, has an auto off button timer on it and also, if it gets tipped over, that it turns off as well. Most of that. Most of today's new portable heaters do that.

Speaker 1: 5:25

You want to have your furnace inspected. I have my firm. I have two furnaces, one for upstairs, one for downstairs, and I have both of them inspected every autumn. Just had mine done last week in order to make sure that it's going to work well in the winter. I don't want to wait for a cold snap to happen. It does get below freezing here in Georgia. I don't want that to happen and then have to call someone to come out because it usually will cost more if it's an emergency visit. If you use a fireplace, especially obviously a wood burning fireplace, you want to make sure that the chimney is clean. I have a gas fireplace and I still have that inspected every other year just to make sure that it's clean and working properly.

Speaker 1: 6:15

You want to install, obviously, carbon monoxide detectors everywhere to protect yourself against odorous, deadly gas, especially if you have a gas stove, a gas fireplace, and you want to keep the temperature no lower than 65 degrees in order to prevent your pipes from freezing, and I'm talking about the pipes inside your home pipes from freezing, and I'm talking about the pipes inside inside your home. As far as fall prevention, that is a big issue for older adults especially, or anybody who has mobility issues during winter time, especially if you live in an area where there's ice and snow mostly ice. We don't get a lot of snow here in Georgia, unless you're up in the mountains, but we do get a lot of snow here in Georgia, unless you're up in the mountains, but we do get a lot of ice and that is a very dangerous situation. So one you want to wear appropriate winter footwear with good traction, non-slip shoes and even if you live in an area that has a lot of ice, then you definitely want to attach spikeless ice and snow gripper type of things to your shoes for extra stability on slippery surfaces and for anyone that uses a cane. Attach an ice gripper, a cane or a walker, attach ice grippers to the tips of those devices to penetrate the ice so that you can secure a firm grip.

Speaker 1: 7:43

I remember I was working in Charlotte, north Carolina, and I treated someone who ended up with a head injury because her Walker didn't have those ice grips. She was walking from her front door to her car. It slipped. She slipped and hit her head on the ice sidewalk. So you definitely don't want to do that. Put the grippers. You can get them on amazon.

Speaker 1: 8:10

You want to carry, if you're going to be taking a walk outdoors, a small bag of rock, salt or sand or kitty litter to sprinkle on many paths that look, you know, extra icy to you or just icy for better traction, and you want to. When you're walking, of course you want to take short steps with your feet slightly pointed outwards and your knees a little bent, and this will help you to walk a little slower and a little more carefully over any icy areas. Of course you always want to have your cell phone with you or some kind of alert device in case you do fall, to contact someone to help you, in case you do fall, to contact someone to help you and you definitely another issue. That may not be necessarily for fall prevention, but if you want to prevent falls or it's just too way too icy or snowy out there, you wanna have a plan for how to get groceries, so you wanna look into grocery delivery services. Maybe you can use Instacart or maybe your local grocery store has delivery services. You also want to look at telemedicine. Does your doctor provide any telemedicine, like a virtual doctor type of thing, in case you cannot get out to the doctor? You want to have those things already set up so that you're not having to scrambling and figure out how to do those things when you need them the most.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Okay, so now I want to talk about emergency preparedness. Now, I don't know about you, but almost every winter I lose my power for a few hours, and springtime too with all the storms. But power outages are an issue because obviously, without power you probably don't have heat. Unless you have a wood fireplace, you probably don't have a way to recharge your phone. So depending on how long that power outage is, you could lose communication abilities. They obviously not going to have internet.

Speaker 1: 10:13

So the things you want to do to prepare for that are you can invest in a backup generator, the Dabson D-A-B-B-S-S-O-N portable power station is very good because you can power it by electricity. Obviously, you want to have it powered before power outage. You can power it with solar energy and you can power it with a gas generator, and you can also power it from your car. So those are four ways that you can power it, and you can even combine some of them, like you can plug it into an outdoor outlet and leave it out in the sun so that it gets powered by both, which means it'll power up a bit faster. So you can invest in that. You obviously you want to keep flashlights, batteries and a battery-powered radio on hand. Those are always good anyway, and if you probably if you live in South Florida or any place that gets a lot of, or any place in the central part of America where you get a lot of tornadoes, south Florida, you get a lot of hurricane issues, bad storms. You already know all of that. Flashlights, batteries and battery powered hand radio are a given in any of those. If you live in any of those areas and you want to stock up on non-perishable food and water, definitely have a lot of water on hand and a lot of canned soup, tuna, anything that you don't have to cook clean granola bars, anything like that, paper plates, paper cups, anything like that.

Speaker 1: 11:53

A communication plan is also extremely important for any emergency preparedness. You want to have a list of emergency contacts. Of course you're going to have that on your phone, but what if you can't open your phone, if it's dead, then you want to have that printed somewhere. You want to consider some type of a medical alert system. If you need help it could be even contacting your neighbors, anything at all and you want to arrange for regular check-ins, and this is where your neighbors and people who are living close by are very useful. You want to check in on each other, make sure that you're okay, and the reason you're going to rely on your neighbors is in case you can't access your phone to contact anyone outside of your immediate area where you can walk outside and see if they're okay.

Speaker 1: 12:40

It could be anything. It could be placing a symbol on the window letting your neighbors around you know that you're okay. If you don't place that symbol by 9 am, then they know something is wrong or whatever time that you designate, but it's a good way to let people around you know that you're doing all right and that you're surviving the event as to as it's happening. Hopefully we will not have any power out of just this winter. I know that that is usually the worst part of any type of storm, be it winter or a summer storm, hurricane or earthquake or tornadoes. Well, I hope these winter safety tips will keep you safe and well so that you can enjoy spring and summer and all the other upcoming seasons in a healthy manner, and isn't that what it's all about? All right, I want to thank you so much for joining me. Don't forget to subscribe and I will see you next time.