Preventative Home Maintenance: 3 Tasks To Get Ready For The Cold Weather

When it comes to the home, cold weather is the most damaging kind of weather. It’s worse than sun exposure, and it’s worse than the mild and damp conditions common in autumn. 

Winter can be freezing cold and wet at the same time, or it can be totally mild and dry, and both these types of elements weaken and damage structures over time. And even when there’s been some snowfall, the amount of shovelling and de-icing you have to do can ruin the beauty. 

But when you put a bit of time into preventative maintenance, your home will stand up against the cold weather with little to no effort. Here are 3 tasks you’ll want to do before the next storm hits. 

Look for Holes in the Insulation

Your home is already likely to be well-insulated. However, the time just before the winter cold truly hits is when it’s best to head around and check for holes in your insulation. 

You really don’t want any gaps in the lining to let the chill in, and if you leave these holes for too long, they could get even worse too. 

Check around your home to see if you can feel air flow where there shouldn’t be any. Head up to the attic to see if there’s any cold breaking in from the roof, and don’t hesitate to invest in some draught excluders for your interior doors as well. 

Clean Out Your Gutters

Guttering takes a hammering during the winter. There’s already going to be a lot of debris up there from the autumn weather, including moss and dead leaves. 

And now the chill and the rain are likely to come down, and that can cause a lot of trouble in your home’s exterior drainage. 

When gutters are too blocked up with sludge to work, the rain isn’t going to go anywhere. That’s dangerous to your health, but it can also cause a slew of water damage penetration. 

When the cold brings icy water inside, you could have some very expensive removal costs on your hands. 

But you can avoid all of this by clearing out the gutters (and the rest of the roof) ASAP. Even if it’s been raining already, and the temperature has already started to drop, call in an eavestrough cleaning company to get any blockages and grime scraped out and shifted. 

Keep the Pipes From Freezing

Frozen pipes cause a lot of trouble. Because it’s not just the pipes themselves that will need fixing and/or replacing. You’ll also need to check for blockages further down the plumbing, as well as if there’s anything going wrong in your toilet cistern or showerhead. 

But you can stop any of these issues from happening by protecting the pipes against the cold in the first place. Wrap them up with a bit of tape and foam, or use pipe covers that can be easily wrapped around.

Preventative home maintenance is key to surviving the winter cold.