Essential Home Maintenance Tips

It’s a good idea to regularly check your house’s exterior for wear. Check your roof for leaks and clear your drainage throughout the year – every season has its own challenges. If your home has a chimney, make sure to inspect it for loose or missing mortar and have it cleaned professionally.

Maintaining a regular cleaning schedule is one of the best maintenance tasks you can set for yourself, but it’s one of the hardest to keep up. Check grout and caulking around the house, and if you’re concerned that a toilet might not be watertight, try adding food coloring to the water to find slow leaks. It’s also important to consider safety throughout the year: Inspect your smoke and carbon dioxide detectors, as well as your fire extinguishers.

Once the leaves start falling, it’s time to prepare for colder weather. Check your windows for leaks — you don’t want your precious warmth leaching out during the winter — and if you haven’t had your furnace inspected within the last two years, make an appointment. This is also a great time to reseal any cracks in your driveway before ice can form in them.

Unless you really like bursting pipes, make sure that your outdoor faucets have been drained before winter begins. And once things have gotten chilly, make sure that your exterior drainage isn’t blocked by ice dams and icicles.

No matter how well you’ve maintained your gutters, early spring is a good time to de-gunk your drainage before the weather really gives it a workout. This would also be a good opportunity to get your air conditioner serviced before the heat hits.

When it comes to home maintenance, summer might be nature’s biggest practical joke — it’s the perfect time for relaxing, but it’s also great for chores. While the sun is out, consider cleaning and repairing patio areas, checking exterior vents and clearing out the gunk that’s accumulated in your window wells and the junk you’ve accumulated in your garage.