A Hampton Roads winter is mostly mild, and that is what makes the cold snaps hard on a house. A home that coasts through December at 50 degrees outside is suddenly asked to hold 68 inside on a January night in the 20s with a wind off the water. Every gap, thin spot, and tired component shows itself at once. Staying warm through that is less about the thermostat than about the house around it. Here are five steps, roughly in the order they pay off, that keep a coastal home comfortable through both the mild weeks and the hard nights.
1. Find out what is in the attic
Heat rises, and in a house with thin or settled attic insulation it keeps rising right out of the roof. Many homes in Hampton Roads built before the 1990s have far less insulation than current recommendations call for, and insulation installed decades ago settles and thins over time. Look in the attic with a flashlight; if you can see the tops of the ceiling joists, there is not enough. Adding insulation is one of the few improvements that lowers the heating bill, the cooling bill, and the strain on the equipment at the same time, and our insulation team can measure what is there and say plainly whether more is worth it.
2. Seal the air leaks you can feel
On a cold, windy night, walk the house with the back of your hand and feel for moving air at window frames, door sweeps, the attic hatch, recessed lights, and the places where pipes and wires pass through exterior walls. Each of those is warm air leaving and cold air arriving, around the clock. Weatherstripping, door sweeps, foam gaskets behind outlet covers on exterior walls, and caulk around penetrations are inexpensive and take a weekend. Keep the fireplace damper closed when the fireplace is not in use, since an open flue is the largest single leak in most homes.
3. Close up the crawl space
The floor is where a coastal house loses heat that people rarely think about. Many homes here sit over a crawl space with open foundation vents, uninsulated ductwork, and bare pipes, and in winter that space is a cold, damp room under every floor in the house. Close and seal the foundation vents for the season, insulate the exposed pipes so they survive the freezes described in our post on preventing frozen pipes, and have the ductwork checked for joints that have separated, since heated air leaking into a 40-degree crawl space is heat you paid for and never felt. If the crawl space stays wet on the water table, a sump pump keeps it drier, and dry air under the floor is warmer air above it.
4. Ask the heating system to do its part
The equipment matters most on the nights the house is working hardest. A heat pump that has had its fall tune-up has clean coils, a correct refrigerant charge, working auxiliary heat strips, and a defrost cycle that runs when it should, and it will hold the house on a 25-degree night without straining. A gas furnace with clean burners and a sound heat exchanger heats safely and completely. In season, the homeowner’s part is a fresh filter every month and a thermostat left at a steady setting rather than moved up and down, since a heat pump asked to jump several degrees calls the expensive strips to do it. For homes with gas service and an aging heat pump, a dual fuel system that runs the furnace on the coldest nights and the heat pump the rest of the time is the most comfortable way to heat here.
5. Plan for the power going out
The coldest nights of a coastal winter often arrive with a nor’easter or an ice storm, and both bring down power lines. No furnace, heat pump, or boiler runs without electricity, so a home’s warmth in a winter storm depends on its backup power plan as much as its insulation. For a house that loses power more than occasionally, a standby generator that starts on its own and carries the heating system through the outage is the difference between an inconvenience and an evacuation. For every home, the plan should at least include knowing where the flashlights are, keeping the thermostat at 55 or above when you are away, and knowing which room holds heat best if the power is out for a night.
The order matters!
These five steps are listed in roughly the order they return the most for the least, and there is a reason the equipment is fourth. A house that leaks heat through the attic and the floor asks the heating system to do more than it should, and no tune-up compensates for a missing layer of insulation. Homeowners who work down the list tend to find that by the time they reach the equipment, it is running less and the house is more comfortable than it has been in years.
Where to start
Russell’s American Mechanical has served Hampton Roads since 1977 with heating, insulation, electrical, plumbing, and generators under one roof, which means the whole list can be worked through with one company. If you would like a technician to measure the attic insulation, check the ductwork, and tune the heating system before the first hard freeze, schedule online, use the website chat, or call, and same-day appointments are available by phone when the day allows. The technician will tell you plainly which steps would do the most for your house, at everyday pricing, and leave the order to you.