ABOVE: Day Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling Owner Bill Krumholz stands with the boiler used to power his shop, as he encourages everyone to get their yearly servicing in to ensure safety and efficiency.

FAIRMONT – With winter fast approaching, local Fairmont experts are sharing advice on how people can keep their homes safe.

Day Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling Owner Bill Krumholz said plumbing and heating are the main things people can look out for right now. With heating, he said whatever supplies heat to the home should be turned on now and checked for issues.

“They should have turned them on a couple weeks ago just to make sure they were on and working,” Krumholz said. “A lot of people wait to the very last minute until it’s finally cold enough in their house that they turn the furnace on and find out it doesn’t work. Now it’s eight o’clock at night, makes for an uncomfortable evening or an after-hours call.”

The filter should also be changed, and any system should have a yearly servicing before it needs to be heavily used. Without having that annual service, Krumholz said the results can be disastrous.

“At the very minimum, maybe higher heating bills and premature failure of the equipment because of lack of maintenance,” he said. “At the very worst, carbon monoxide and death. If your furnace heat exchanger is cracked, or if your burner is not burning complete combustion, it’s making carbon monoxide, and you got an older furnace, and it’s rolling into the house. That’s what happens.”

Even if it is a geothermal heating system, Krumholz said they should have their fluid levels checked in the loop field.

With plumbing, Krumholz said people should have their hoses disconnected from outside faucets if it hasn’t been done already. If you live in a mobile home, now is the time to call and have the heat tape checked so the water line to the trailer doesn’t freeze later on.

The most common calls Krumholz said he receives are for frozen water lines and plumbing vents on home roofs that tend to freeze over. He said for vents, heat tape can be placed to try and avoid this.

One thing Krumholz said people will sometimes do with plumbing is place a styrofoam cap over their outside faucets. He said doing this is a waste of money, as a large majority of exterior home faucets are freezeless and shut off 12 inches inside the house. This means the cap does nothing to prevent freezing, as the water is shut off well before it reaches the end of the faucet.

While nothing really needs to be done for cooling units like A/C in the winter, Krumholz said some people put covers over their units for perceived protection. This should not be done, as A/C units are designed to be left unprotected, and putting a protective cover around them makes it a perfect home for mice.

For electricity, Fairmont Electric Superintendent Miles Heide said people should watch out for space heaters. As well as making sure nothing flammable is nearby, Heide said it is a common culprit for bill increases.

“A typical 1500-watt space heater, that’ll draw probably around $50 per month on your bill if you run it for eight hours a day,” he said.

Other ways to keep costs down include running ceiling fans to push warm air down instead of letting it stay up, opening curtains to let in natural sunlight and help with heat, and unplugging any electrical devices that aren’t being used on a daily basis. As for electrical systems themselves, Heide said they are designed to withstand any type of weather condition.

“Whether it be fall, winter, summer, there’s really not a lot you can do to help your electric system in the wintertime,” he said.