MINNEAPOLIS — It’s winter, which means you’ve probably got a lot on your mind if you’re a homeowner.
In Minnesota, those include a few of the big-ticket concerns: Heating costs and ice dams.
As for heating costs, the federal government expected them to skyrocket for most customers this winter, due to a variety of factors like pandemic supply chain problems.
However, Minnesota Department of Commerce Commissioner Grace Arnold said that Mother Nature has been able to tame some of those costs, to an extent.
“It’s cycled, but it’s been on average a little bit warmer, and fuel prices were not as high as originally projected,” Arnold said, “for those who are on natural gas.”
Even so, winter is winter, and there are a few common sense ways to lower your heating bills.
Perhaps none are more important than dropping your thermostat at night.
“It’s really amazing. Just a couple degrees,” Arnold said, “and you can have a 10-percent savings.”
You can also try wrapping your windows with plastic film to stop drafts, or you can adjust your heat register vents, like the commissioner does.
“We’ve closed all the registers on the top floor, and we’ve opened the registers on the bottom floor,” Arnold said, “and that keeps the heat much more balanced.”
Something else to keep an eye on this winter are those pesky ice dams, which form when snow on your roof melts and then freezes.
Steve Kuhl of the Ice Dam Company knows it better than anyone.
“One of the main issues, of course, is that you get water into your building system,” Kuhl said. “Usually, it manifests in the form of a water spot or it can come through the ceiling, or show up in the wall cavities.”
To prevent them, you can rake snow off your roof or call a professional to improve insulation.
But with the wild temperature swings predicted this week – from sub-zero to the freezing mark on Tuesday and Wednesday – Kuhl said you should differentiate between ice dams and attic frost.
The latter is when warm air collides with a cold surface, causing condensation.
“In terms of attic frost, all you can do, is improve the performance of your house,” Kuhl said. “And that, I believe, is going to a problem in the next couple of weeks as temperatures are doing this.”
But beware of that snow – possibly coming later this week.
“As soon as we get more snow,” Kuhl said, “we’re going to see more and more ice dams.”
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