The winter season is coming and you need to prepare your home so you can enjoy the holidays in peace. So, you should use fall as a time to prepare your home to ensure that it can withstand the extreme weather conditions ahead of you. With so many things to prepare for winter, your home should be a number one priority, because you don’t want to spend the holidays scrambling around to clean your home. So here is some essential maintenance you should do so you and your home can stay warm all through the winter.
Inspect the roof
The roof is a primary part of your home that is designed to protect its occupants. Without a good roof, the entire structure of your home is compromised. If there are some loose or damaged shingles they can cause a leak during rain and snow in winter. A damaged roof can cause high energy bills during the winter, not to mention water damage in your attic or top-floor rooms. If you are comfortable going up and checking the roof make sure you have given ice or snow time to melt before going to inspect so you can see if shingles are damaged. But unless you’re skilled and have the necessary safety equipment, you should call in the professionals to help you out.
Clear out rain gutters
If you have rain gutters on your roof, then you will definitely want to take care of them before winter comes. As leaves fall throughout autumn they can get clogged, which will cause problems when rain and snow come. Also, heavy snow or ice can loosen fasteners and pull gutters away from your home, which may cause drainage issues. So make sure you clear out leaves, dirt, and anything else that is caught in gutters and downspouts before winter. You can do this with a tall ladder and a very stiff broom - or just your hands in some gloves.
Check the heating
Depending on the type of heating system you have, there are a few home maintenance things you should do before the temperature drops. So, before winter officially arrives you need to change the filter and have someone professional check your heating. If you want to do the task yourself, then you might want to specialize in working as an HVAC technician, or you really risk messing up your system. The worst thing that could happen is that your heating system fails in the middle of winter, because not only will you be left with a cold home, but you’ll be paying much higher prices to have it fixed ASAP.
Clean dryer vents
After you dry a load of laundry, it is normal to clean off the lint trap, but when did you last clean the dryer vent? As the sun retracts, we won’t be hanging clothes out to dry in the sun anymore, and we’ll be using the indoor dryer. The plugged dryer vent will cause your dryer to run inefficiently and that is bad for both your clothes and the machine. Also, clogged dryer vents are dangerous because they can cause a house fire. To prevent this buildup use a flat vacuum attachment to get clogs out of the vent trap and clean out the dryer vent duct with a larger brush.
Clean your chimney
If you have a fireplace that serves a purpose other than just decoration, then you need to clean it every once in a while. So if you are going to clean the chimney yourself, you will need to invest in prospective goggles, platforms and ladders, a large chimney brush, and enough plastic sheeting to block off the fireplace from the rest of the room. You want your chimney cleaned before the first snowfall, or you might not be able to reach it from the outside, because of a slippery roof.
Clean window weep holes
Many windows have a weep hole on the exterior bottom of the frame. These holes are designed to drain away rainwater that can collect in the frame’s bottom channel. Weep holes can get plugged with bugs, dirt, and debris, and if that happens water could fill the channel and spill over into the house. You can check if your weep holes are working by simply pouring a glass of water into the track. If you don’t see water coming out of the hole, you can poke it with a wire or spray it out with compressed air, and wet it down again.
As the weather gets colder, we’ll be spending more time indoors and we want our home to be a safe, clean space for ourselves, and our family, so prepare on time and prepare it well to make sure the winter months are spent in joy and festivities, not worrying about parts of your home collapsing or having to do repairs in the middle of winter. You can call a general handyman to do all the checks at once and recommend any fixes that need to be made, to make sure you don’t miss anything.
WRITTEN BY
Daria Brown