It’s Freezing Down Here! How to Keep Your Basement Warm During the Cold Season

Finishing off the basement in your home is one of the smartest decisions that you’ll ever make. A finished basement will give you and your family a lot more room to stretch out.

But in the wintertime, those with finished basements often run into a problem: Their basements suddenly get way too cold to use and turn into wasted space.

By learning how to keep your basement warm during the colder months of the year, you can get a lot more use out of it. You and your family won’t mind hanging out in the basement in the winter, even when the temperature drops well below freezing outside.

Check out some of the steps you can take to keep your basement warm through any cold snap.

Make Sure Your Basement Is Sealed

If your basement has already been finished off, there’s a good chance that it was already sealed. But there is also a chance that the basement wasn’t sealed properly, which can let a lot of cold air into your home throughout the winter months.

Specifically, you should take a look at the rim joists in your basement to see if they’re sealed. The rim joists form at the point where the flooring above your basement comes into contact with your foundation.

If your rim joists aren’t sealed, they can allow cold air from outside to get into your home. It’s important for rim joists to be sealed with caulk to prevent this from happening.

You should also look around for any other areas where air could be penetrating your home and entering your basement. For example, you’ll often find air coming in around holes for plumbing pipes or through small cracks in your foundation.

Seal these entry points up ASAP, and you should be able to stop cold air from coming into your basement.

Add More Insulation

Most finished basements already have some insulation in the walls. Homeowners often have loose-fill insulation or spray-foam insulation set up in an effort to keep a basement warm.

If your walls feel cold to the touch, though, your insulation isn’t doing enough to stop cool air from gaining access to your basement. You’ll need to either replace the insulation that you have or add to it so that it starts working better.

Insulating a basement can be a little bit tricky. It’s not quite as simple as insulating one of the upper levels of your home. But when you choose the right insulation and have it installed properly, it should put up a fight against the cold.

Put in a Heating Vent

There are some people who will set up electric space heaters in their basements in an effort to keep them warm. And while space heaters will provide some heat in your basement, you’re a lot better off adding a heating vent that’s connected to your HVAC system to it.

You can tap directly into your home’s existing ductwork to put a heating vent in your basement. You can also add a return air vent to your basement as long as it’s finished.

By taking these steps, you’ll be able to gain more control over the heating situation in your basement. You’ll be a lot more likely to use your basement when you know it has hot air being delivered to it.

Install Carpeting

Lots of people have cement or tile floors in their basements. Reason being, they’re concerned about their basements getting wet and know cement and tile floors will be easier to clean than carpeting.

The downside of relying on these types of floors, though, is that they’ll often get cold in the wintertime and never get around to heating back up. They’ll make it impossible for you to walk around barefoot in your basement during the winter.

Find out more about how to keep water out of your basement in the winter and at other times of the year. Once you feel confident that water won’t be a problem, you can go ahead and have carpeting installed to warm your basement space up.

Replace Old Windows

You might be surprised by how many people have freezing cold basements in their homes simply because of the windows they have in them. Basement windows are sometimes ignored when window replacement is done in a home, which is why so many basement windows are single-pane windows that allow air to pass right through them.

If your basement windows are on the older side, they’re not doing you any favors. They should be replaced with energy efficient windows that will stop cold air in its tracks and keep your basement on the warmer side.

Take a Look at Your Crawlspace

Do you have a crawlspace that’s connected to your basement? It very well could be the reason why your basement is getting so cold in the wintertime.

You can spend all the time and money you want finishing off your basement and making changes to it to try and keep it warm. But if you have a crawlspace attached to it that is not sealed and insulated, it’s going to wreak havoc on the temperature in your basement.

Hire a professional to come in and seal your crawlspace or attempt to seal it yourself so that it doesn’t present a problem for you anymore.

Knowing How to Keep Your Basement Warm Makes a Huge Difference

Now that you know how to keep your basement warm, you should use what you’ve learned to make improvements to the space. By doing something as simple as sealing your basement or adding insulation to it, you can make a world of a difference.

When your basement is warm in the winter, it won’t be such an unpleasant place to go anymore. You and your family will be able to continue using it as you always do without having to bundle up before you go down into it.

Finishing off a basement and making it warm is one way to make your home more attractive to buyers down the line. Read our blog to see some other home improvements you can do to increase the value of your property.

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