Things You Should Do to Your Home Before Fall Starts

With fall knocking on our doors, many of us are eager to bring the wind of change into our households. Maintaining a pleasant and healthy home is, of course, always in vogue. But fall is the perfect season to refresh your home before the rain and cold weather kick in. We are going to talk about things you should do at your home before fall starts to inspire you to step into this season with a fresh outlook.

1. You should clean your gutters, or even replace them

After the holiday seasons, many homeowners engage in a thorough cleaning spree to wash away the dust, dirt, and other residue that might have inhabited their homes over the summer. However, many people tend to overlook their gutters and only focus on the interior of the home. Another reason this happens so often is related to the fact that most of the time gutters work satisfactorily. This makes it hard to notice incoming problems with water drainage.

Put a stop to your gutter problems this fall.

However, you might be running the risk of flooding the inside of your home if the piled up leaves or other such materials clog up the gutterways. That is why preventive and thorough cleaning of your gutters should be done each fall.

Fall is the perfect season to do so because drainage problems most often occur at this time of the year. And the expense of hiring a professional service is negligible compared to its importance – it usually costs around $120.

Inspect the home for draft

The proper functioning of your HVAC system mostly depends on regular maintenance, adequate ventilation and insulation of the property. It is usually difficult to figure out that you have insulation problems in the summer. However, fall is the season when you need to get your home in good shape before the cold winter months come crawling through the slits in your window frames. The following time-tested method to check for draft issues:

• Close the window or door you want to check out on a strip of paper.
• If the paper slides off easily, then you ought to consider fresh weatherstripping.

Unfortunately, homeowners might unknowingly lose a lot of money due to heat loss through windows and other openings in the structure of the home. In fact, energy loss might make up as much as 25 to 30% of your energy consumption. So, if you start receiving strangely high electricity bills, you should definitely engage in some protective weatherstripping. This is probably the simplest and most cost-effective way to keep your energy consumption in check.

In fact, checking for draft is one of the first things you should resolve before you relocate to a new home. If you have moved in recently, this is the perfect opportunity to repair all household issues, draft issues included. Furniture and home decor usually make any necessary construction work much harder to execute.

Close and drain the faucets in your backyard

If you have a backyard, do not forget to drain the outdoor faucets while you are doing your pre-fall landscaping.  Draining the faucets and disconnecting the hoses and other backyard paraphernalia should become an indispensable part of your fall routine. The fact is,water freezing might inflict serious damage on your piping and other structures.

Drain the pool and close the faucets before cold weather kicks in.

And since you probably do not want your pipes to burst this fall, make sure you do this simple backyard task without delays.

Fix the cracks on your porch or driveway

This is one of those household tasks that usually get postponed ad infinitum. The main reason for this is that small cracks are perfectly benign most of the time. However, with cold weather, rain, and frost, these small cracks are gradually becoming larger and larger. As the rainfall goes in and freezes, the crack eventually becomes a hole in the concrete.

The birth of a pothole on your driveway is something you can easily avoid. Just be sure to fill up the small slits and cracks in due time (that is, as part of your fall home maintenance!)

Check if your winter equipment works properly

You will be thankful to yourself that you had the proper foresight to check if your winter equipment works well. For instance, you will avoid a lot of stress and discomfort if you check your snowblower now rather than later. Your car could get stuck in snow and you might be powerless to dig it out with a malfunctioning snowblower.

Hence, just make sure you have a quick glance at your winter tools and gear as it will save you a lot of trouble later on. All it takes is a few minutes, but the precaution will definitely be worth it.

To prevent damage to some of your tools, machines, or equipment due to water or cold, you might consider storing all of it in a safe and dry storage unit. Nowadays, there are many sustainable ideas for your storage that you can implement to reduce your climate impact. The very fact that you go the length to protect your possessions from cold weather rather than buy new is an important step toward making your home more eco-friendly.

Check the detectors

If you want your detectors to detect, you better do a thorough check every fall.

Now that fall is here, you will be relying on your furnace or HVAC system to heat up your home. As they might be working overtime this fall, it is quite important that you check the batteries and expiration dates on your smoke and CO detectors.

A rule of thumb states that batteries in smoke detectors need to be changed every 10 years or so. CO detectors last for about 6 years, but nevertheless, regular inspection of the batteries and filters is definitely one of the things you should do to your home before fall starts.