Cold Temperatures and Your Northwoods Home Performance

A tip for today: When bitterly cold temperatures are forecast and you are away from your Northwoods vacation home, it is best not to set your thermostats less than 50 degrees. Even if your home is well insulated, cabinets against exterior walls may contain an average temperature from the room and the coolness of the exterior wall. If you have set your thermostats to 40 or 45 degrees, there is little margins left to the 32 degrees that may freeze your plumbing.

50 degrees gives you a little more margin for error if the furnace goes out or you have plumbing on the exterior walls of your home. I always suggest some sort of monitoring system to make sure you are notified if your heat fails you. These are as simple as call devices purchased at any hardware store or part of a monitored security system, which is the most fool-proof.

I also suggest leaving the doors open to your cabinets to let the interior cabinet temperatures match the room temperature and not the exterior wall temperatures. Another way to look at it is you are setting your interior temperature within 18 degrees of freezing when at 50 degrees. When it is 20 below outside, that is 52 degrees colder than freezing. And we depend on our exterior walls to protect possible plumbing pipes just inches from the -20 below temperatures.

I trust this helps you and it may very well save you trouble in the future.

John

Follow North Twin Builders Blog for tips on winterizing your Northwoods home!