5 Ways To Keep Your House Warm This Holiday Season

The holiday season is finally here! It’s time for hot chocolate, snowball fights and sitting in front of the fire. The only negative thing about the season is having to wear five layers of clothes to keep warm, and that’s inside the house. It doesn’t matter how much you love sweater weather, if it’s freezing inside, all you feel is misery.

If your house doesn’t do well in the winter, you’re probably paying a higher homeowners insurance premium, and that can get costly around the holidays. Here are five ways to warm up your space, and once you do it, you can look for a new homeowners insurance quote with CoverHound that will protect your home and pad your wallet!

Use Your Ceiling Fans

Ceiling fans aren’t only good for cooling down in the summer, they’re also good for warming the place up in the winter. It probably reads as a little counterintuitive to use a ceiling fan during the winter. Won’t it just keep everything cool? Not if you have the fan spin counter-clockwise.

Running the ceiling fan counter-clockwise causes the hot air moving at the top of the ceiling to work its way back down along the walls of the room and to the floor. The heat will travel to the middle of the room and then back up to the ceiling fan, where the ceiling fan will disperse the heat once more. This will keep the space at a comfortable temperature. Using your ceiling fan in the winter too will save you as much as 10 percent on your total heating costs: double bonus!

Update Your Heating and Air Conditioning System

If your house is older, it might need a little TLC in preparation for the winter months. Homeowners insurance companies tend to charge a higher premium for older homes because the structure and property typically has not been renovated or remodeled for a period of time. Newer houses usually have modernized plumbing and electrical systems, something your house from the 1970s might not have.

When you take measures to update and outfit your home with a better HVAC system, your insurance company will inspect the work and lower your premium cost. If your HVAC system is 10 years or older, it’s time for an upgrade. You’ll definitely notice a difference in the temperature of your home and the heating bill.

Invest in an Area Rug

Area rugs aren’t only for décor, they warm up a space too, aesthetically and physically. According to SF Gate, area rugs “warm a room by acting as insulation between the floor and your feet; an area rug keeps your feet from coming in contact with a cold surface. Generally, a thicker area rug better insulates the room and your feet from the cold.”

Area rugs work well in carpeted and non-carpeted spaces. To learn more about how to select the right area rug for your home, click here.

Rearrange Your Furniture

Furniture placement in the home is essential in creating a comfortably warm space. If your sofa, desk or bed frame is blocking a heating vent, you’re not getting the full benefits of your heating unit.

You will need to rearrange your furniture for better airflow. The rearrangement will depend on where the heating vents are placed in your home. Make sure there is no obstruction blocking the vents. Remember that people traffic, symmetry and the function of the space are considered when you rearrange your furniture.

Close Unused Rooms

If you live in a large house and don’t use a lot of the space, shut the doors to the rooms you don’t use, there’s no point in heating a space that you’re never in!

By following these tips you’ll see both your heating bill and homeowners insurance rates go down. If your insurance rates don’t drop like they should, visit CoverHound for a free quote.