7 Fall Home Maintenance Musts

7 Fall Home Maintenance Musts

Now that fall is officially here, it’s time to think about how to prepare your home. Take a look at these 7 fall home maintenance musts you should do to prepare you home for the colder months. By spreading these fall home maintenance tasks over the next few weeks, you’ll ensure your home is ready for the cooler weather when it hits.

Get your home ready for fall with these 7 fall home maintenance tips.

Fertilize your lawn

Fertilizing your lawn in the fall will help protect it during winter and help the green appear faster when spring comes around. This is especially true when you have extremely hot summers and extremely cold winters since grass tends to stop growing under such harsh conditions. The fall is also a good time to repair any patches in your back yard lawn that have been harmed by dog urine. Pull up the dead grass, and spread some top soil with seed on the spots. With all the rain that comes in the fall, you’re sure to see new grass grow relatively quickly.

Get your HVAC serviced

Your AC has been running smoothly for the entire summer, and now it’s time to clean the coils and put it away. Once clean and dry, cover the unit to keep debris and ice from damaging your system. Also, if your air ducts haven’t been cleaned in a while think about giving them an air duct cleaning before your blow heat out of the vents all winter.

Clean gutters

This is a tedious task, but is so worth the effort. Make sure to grab your spouse or friend so you’re working in a pair. One of you will stand on the ladder while the other one is ensuring the ladder doesn’t move. The person on the ladder should pull debris out of the gutters. If you have a one-story house, a leaf blower also does the trick. Skipping this task for the fall could result in several thousands of dollars in flooding repair.

Turn off and drain sprinklers

The last thing you want is to go to turn on the water and it’s frozen and burst. Disconnect your hoses, turn off the outdoor water supply and then open faucets and run sprinkler to drain them of water. Buy a couple outdoor foam faucet covers to place over your water valves in the front and back yard.

Check for drafts

When it’s cold outside, you don’t want to feel drafts sneaking into your house when you’re trying to warm up. A good tip is to walk around the edges of windows and doors with a lit candle and if the flame flickers there is most likely a draft. If necessary, replace seals and repair caulking around windows and door frame. Consider buying heavier of insulated drapery for especially drafty windows and doors.

Keep a raincoat/umbrella in the car

You never know where you’ll be a rain storm hits, especially living in the Pacific Northwest. Keep a raincoat or an umbrella in the trunk of your car in case a rain storm happens at an inopportune time. You’ll be grateful later when you don’t show up for a meeting soaking wet from running into the building with no raincoat.

Locate your ice scraper

Once temperatures hit the 40s, freezing temperatures are right around the corner. You don’t want to be rushing out of the house late for a meeting when you realize you still need to defrost your windshields and you don’t know where your scraper is. Make sure to locate a scraper and put one in every car. It’s also helpful to have a pair of gloves or a mitt style scraper so your hands don’t freeze when you are scraping the ice off your windshield. If scraping is not your style, you can buy some defrosting spray which melts the ice in seconds.

You might also like:  6 Simple Winter Home Maintenance Tasks