At Home with Lisa: Always keep your heaters clear

The recent cold weather this spring reminded me that I had a couch blocking my baseboard heaters. I needed to turn on these heaters again and to make sure they are working properly.

I was cursed with electric baseboard heaters when I bought my house. When the cold weather sets in, these heaters are what keep me warm.

Once or twice a year, I vacuum my baseboards. This is easy to do: shut off the power to the heaters, pull off the front plate to expose the grill and use the brush attachment on your vacuum.

I also need to keep furniture clear of these. The weekend before the pandemic shut everything down, my boyfriend bought us a new couch. We got it set up in the living room, but it was raining very hard that day and we couldn’t take my old couch out to a local charity. It has been blocking my baseboard heater in the living room ever since.

I finally got rid of that couch a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Not only to I have a lot more room in my living room, but it is no longer blocking the heat and that makes a huge difference in my comfort level.

Now that this lesson is clear to me, I’m going to check my other heaters and make sure there isn’t any furniture blocking them before next winter comes.

Lisa, an Avista customer, bought her 1910 house because she loved the old-world character, some of which doesn’t make her house very energy efficient. Lisa is sharing her experience on taking some simple do-it-yourself improvements to inspire others to do the same. You’ll find her stories right here every Tuesday morning.