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The Best Windows for Cold Climates

One of the best ways to stay warm and cozy during wintertime is by investing in the right windows. Even if you have a perfectly functioning HVAC system, the wrong window type could force your equipment to work harder to keep the temperature in your home at optimal levels. This will leave you with high energy bills.

When choosing the best windows for cold climates, you need to consider several factors to keep your home comfortable. Here are some characteristics that are perfect for homes in areas like Viroqua, WI:

The Best Windows for Cold Climates

Windows With Vinyl, Wood, Fiberglass, or Composite Frames

An excellent place to start when choosing windows is the frame material. Wood, vinyl, fiberglass, and composite are great at maintaining optimal temperatures all year round. Wood with vinyl cladding is also ideal because wood holds heat best while the vinyl protects the wood.

Windows With a Low U-Factor

To make sure your windows effectively prevent heat loss, look for ones with a low U-factor or insulation value. This determines how well a window stops heat from escaping or entering your home. For the best insulation, look for the lowest possible rating. You can also check the U-factor requirement applicable in your area.

Windows With Multiple Glass Panes

If you’re looking for ways to better protect your home from the cold, you should opt for windows with more than one glass pane. Double- or triple-pane windows are suitable because they hold heat well enough to keep your abode warm and comfortable. These windows can also be insulated with gas in-feels like krypton and argon, which slow down heat transfer.

Windows With a High SHGC Rating

Select windows with a relatively high SHGC or Solar Heat Gain Coefficient rating. This measures how well they block heat from the sun. The rating ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 allowing no solar heat and 1 permitting maximum solar heat. A higher SHGC rating will help provide your home with natural heat even during winter.

Windows With a Low Air Infiltration Rate

When air leaks around the frame, the temperature in your home will decrease. This will force your heater to compensate. To avoid that, the best windows to get are ones with an air infiltration rate of 0.3 cubic feet per minute or less.

Windows With a Low-E Coating

If you want to minimize the amount of ultraviolet and infrared light passing through your windows without compromising visible light, choose panes with low-E coatings. These coatings are thinner than human hair and can conduct heat back into your home. They are also known to improve the thermal efficiency of a window.

Find the Perfect Windows for Your Home

If you’re looking for quality windows that suit your needs and style preferences, we can help you at Nuzum Building Supply in Viroqua, WI. We offer quality products from the most popular name brands and provide superior service that has been trusted since 1894. Call us today to get free quotes and estimates. We will be glad to help you!

How to Organize a Garage for More Space

Is clutter slowly creeping into your life and taking up your garage space with overflowing items ready to bust out? Most of the time, we don’t find the time nor the energy to declutter our spaces. For most people, the best place to keep items and forget about them is usually the garage. However, over time the stored items become overwhelming. Where and how do you begin to declutter and organize your garage for more space? Consider these six guidelines below:

1. Get Your Friends to Help

What better way to get help than by involving your friends in your garage organizing project? Gather your friends over for a garage cleaning get-together. Make the atmosphere more relaxing by playing music and serving food and drinks. Trade labor, your friends help you clean your garage in exchange for someday having your help to clean and organize theirs.

2. Plan Ahead

Will you need shelving, storage cabinets, bins, and packing boxes? If so, purchase these items before starting on organizing your garage. Having storage shelving, cabinets, and other storage items on hand will minimize the time and energy you require to run to a local store to purchase what you need.

Plan on the number of days you require to clean and organize your garage. Planning for a day or two within the same weekend will ensure you don’t procrastinate and finish organizing your garage.

3. Organize your items per category

As you remove all items from your garage, pile them according to their use. Are they power tools and electricals? Pile these together. Are they bedroom, living room, or kitchen items? Give them their pile. And so on. Next, break them down further into different categories: Keep, sell, donate, trash.

A suggestion, to avoid keeping items you might never use, ask yourself. Will I ever use this item in the next 3 to 6 months or 1-year at the maximum? Remember, you want to declutter and organize your garage, not to clutter it again.

4. Think Vertical Storage

Once your garage is empty, take a paper and draw out a simple layout of where you would like to store the different ‘Keep’ items. Tall storage shelving or cabinets take up less garage space and store more items. A long closet with sliding doors saves on space than a cabinet with swinging doors. A pegboard over a work table or even in the closet for handy tools is more practical than piling them in a box. Hanging garden tools onto wall pegs is better than placing them on the floor.

5. Organize small items

Bits and pieces such as nails, screws, sandpaper, power cords, and other small bits can be difficult to organize. Consider using labeled jars or containers to store these different items.

6. Hang up large items

Items such as ladders, wheelbarrows, mowers, and other large objects take up much-needed space. Consider hanging them on the wall, if possible, to save on your garage space.

Do you need to build your storage shelves or cabinets? Give us a call today or stop-in at Nuzum Building Supply for Free Quotes and Estimates.

Benefits of Elevated Gardening Beds and How to Build Your Own

Getting the urge to try out your green thumb? Elevated or raised bed gardens are one of the most convenient and attractive ways to add vegetables or flowers to your yard. While many people find the process of making a raised bed intimidating, there is little to worry about. A raised bed can come together in an afternoon with the right materials.

Reasons to Choose Raised Beds

Raised beds have several advantages over ground-level planting. They offer better drainage, which can prevent root rot. Raised beds make it easy to improve your soil to raise fuller, more vibrant plants. They are also easier to work with because you do not have to bed as far in order to use them.

When you start a raised bed with fresh soil, you can avoid many of the weeds that can be a problem when using the topsoil already in your yard. This means less time weeding and less competition for the plants you want to grow.

A raised bed garden is also aesthetically pleasing. Create multiple beds with paths between to add a calming garden oasis to your yard.

How to Build a Raised Bed Garden

Putting in elevated beds is far easier than it looks. Choose the wood for your border and decide how tall you want your beds to be. Depending on your carpentry skills, you can either build the entire bed yourself or buy premade corner brackets.

Best Wood Choice for Elevated Beds

Many people recommend cedar because this wood is naturally rot-resistant. However, juniper and redwood are also good choices. Choosing rot-resistant woods will ensure that your beds last longer. Many well-constructed beds can last 15 years or more. Our treated MicroPro lumber is also a safe alternative for raised garden beds.

Setting Dimensions for a Raised Bed

How tall the bed should be depending on the soil beneath. If you have good soil that roots can penetrate, a bed that is only six inches high can be sufficient. The most common bed height is 11 inches, which can be accomplished by stacking two six-inch boards. The maximum height for a raised bed is about 36 inches.

Whatever height you choose, remember that you have to add soil to fill it. Additionally, taller beds will need more support than shorter ones because of the weight and pressure of the soil.

Beds should be no more than four feet wide. This allows you to reach the center of the bed without stepping on and compressing your soil. The bed can be as long as you wish. Just be sure to add cross supports every four to six feet.

Choosing Soil for a Raised Bed

You can use the topsoil from your yard; however, adding soil to a raised bed is an opportunity to choose rich, weed-free soil with improved drainage.

Many people start their first garden with purchased soil. A mix of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 compost offers both drainage and nutrition for plants. If you have a supply of compost at home, you can also make a homemade soil with half compost and half topsoil.

For building supplies and more information on your next home improvement project, stop on in our store or give our team at Nuzum Building Supplies a call!

Benefits of Installing a Ceiling Fan

When the summer months come knocking at our doors, it’s quite difficult to stay cool and refreshed. It’s even more difficult to stay inside our house because the air is all hot and humid. At the end of the day, we’ll be sweating profusely and truly exhausted from all the heat.

Luckily, there are a lot of ways to make our rooms breezy during the sweltering season. One perfect method is to install a ceiling fan.

What Is a Ceiling Fan?

As the name suggests, a ceiling fan is a fan that is suspended from the ceiling of a room or space. It has hub-mounted rotating blades that help circulate air, thus producing a cooling effect in the nearby area.

What Makes A Ceiling Fan Beneficial?

· Ceiling Fans Are Also Great for Cold Weather

Most people simply associate ceiling fans as devices to cool down a room. But in reality, ceiling fans are a lot more flexible than that — because they can actually bring warmth to a space as well.

This is because ceiling fans have two settings that dictate the direction of the blades. You can create either a downdraft or an updraft. With the downdraft, the air is blown downwards, thus cooling the area beneath. Meanwhile, the updraft setting draws the cooler air upward so that the warmer air near the ceiling is the one that’s circulated below.

In other words, the ceiling fan is a versatile device because you can use it both during the summer and winter.

· Ceiling Fans Help Get Rid of Insects and Pests

Summer isn’t just the season for heat and humidity — it’s also the season of bugs, insects, and pests invading our houses. Luckily, if you have a ceiling fan, it’s easier to get rid of them. This is because the breeze works against them, so they’re practically blown away by the airflow produced by the fan.

As a result, not only will a ceiling fan refresh you, but it will also guard you against bothersome insects.

· Ceiling Fans Can Also Provide Light and Beauty

Over the years, ceiling fan manufacturers have added more functionalities and designs to the products. As a result, the ceiling fans we can find nowadays already come with an extra lighting feature, as well as a stunning design.

This makes ceiling fans a great addition to any room. It will help cool or warm the place, and at the same time, it brightens the place and looks great in the view.

Ceiling fans are a lot more flexible and versatile than we actually think. They can cool down a room or warm it, and they also have a light feature and beautiful design.

Because of this, it’s a great idea to have a ceiling fan in at least one room of your house. Give our team a call at Nuzum Building Supply for everything you need for your project.

5 Tips When Painting the Exterior of Your Home

There are a lot of decisions and preparations that go into painting your home’s exterior. You have to find the right paint color, use the right tools, and have some knowledge of what you are doing. It isn’t easy but that is why we have curated the best tips to help make exterior painting a breeze!

Here are 5 tips you should know when painting the exterior of your home:

Consider Mother Nature – Don’t forget about the weather! It is important to pay attention to the weather if you are going to be outside all day painting. Select a dry time of the year when there is little rain and humidity. Paint needs to dry and will not adhere to surfaces correctly if they are not dry.
Quality Over Price – The better the paint quality, the fewer times you’ll need to repaint over the years. Paint technology has improved so much that most colors are guaranteed to last longer than they have before. You may be tempted to save some money on cheaper paint, but that will only cause you more trouble, and more money down the road!
Sand and Wash – Paint doesn’t adhere to wet surfaces, as well as dirty and rough surfaces. Clean the siding and trim around your house. Allow that to dry, then sand. This will ensure the smoothest paint finish.
Use Primer – Its always been a rule to apply a good coat of primer before your color. This will have the color looking brighter and lasting longer. However, new paint technologies have combined paint and primer into one product, which ultimately will save you money compared to buying two separate products. If your perfect paint color doesn’t include primer in the mix, make sure you apply some before!
Work from Top to Bottom – Start working your way from the top of the house to the bottom. This will help control streaks, as well as having you work with gravity rather than against it! Drips are going to happen, so this method will help you fix those as you are working rather than having to go backwards.

While painting the exterior of your home can be something you can do yourself, if you don’t feel prepared enough, that’s okay. Hiring a professional painter to get the labor done instead could be the better option. For advice and contractor recommendations, give the team at Nuzum Building Supply a call!