Preparing Your Home for Winter – 3 Key Steps

The nights are getting longer, the days are getting colder and the dry summer days are a thing of the past. That’s right, winter is fast approaching – and it’s important that your home is ready for the change in weather.

Whether it’s a drop in temperatures, a rise in rainfall or a combination of the two, winter weather poses plenty of challenges for your home. If it’s not prepared, those challenges can become serious problems. Fortunately, there are a few ways to be proactive and protect your home from the off.

1. Preventing ingress

Wet conditions don’t just put a dampener on your outdoor plans. They can also cause problems for your home, getting into even the smallest of cracks. When water gets into cracks, it can freeze and expand which causes render to blow and cracks to worsen.

Over time, the water that gets into these cracks can also cause internal issues like damp and decay. Needless to say, that will become more likely as cracks worsen, whether it’s on external render or within the pointing between bricks.

An effective way to stop this is by spraying cork directly onto bricks or render. This works to fill in the mortar between bricks or the cracks in existing render, stopping water in its tracks and protecting your home.

Plastering over 6mm of cork for internal insulation

2. Improving insulation

While we all try and keep the heating off for as long as possible, it becomes a necessity in the winter months, with temperatures dropping into single figures. If your home isn’t well insulated, that heat can escape, making it harder to keep your home at a comfortable temperature.

Insulating your home can reduce this issue, and in turn reduce your energy bills. Draught-proofing your windows and doors, adding thick, thermally lined curtains and investing in loft insulation can all make a difference.

However, one of the most important areas for improvement are your walls. Cork render can make a big difference in this respect, adding an insulative layer to your walls to stop heat escaping. That will reduce the need to crank up the heating, saving you money on your energy bills over time.

3. Check your roof

Finally, it’s important to check your roof in the lead up to winter. While it might seem to be working fine in the summer months, the heavier rainfall in winter will soon expose any issues. By then, most roofers will be booked up and you could have to deal with leaks for several days and even weeks.

Again, this is an area where cork-based coatings can help. Corksol’s flexible cork-based system can be used to waterproof pitched roofs, adding an extra layer of protection against rainfall and preventing leaks.

Before roof coating

After roof coating

Photo credit buildingcoatings.org

Prepare your home for winter

Want to make your home winter-ready? Corksol can help. Whether it’s your walls or your roof, our innovative cork-based coatings can help you keep heat in and rain out. Get in touch with us to find out more, or find a local approved applicator today.