Essential Year-Round Reminders for Home Maintenance

man painting walls

You need to make time for home maintenance. No matter how tedious and tiring it may seem, regular checks and maintenance will help avoid more significant problems and save you time, energy, and money. You won’t have to call your local handyman as often if you perform enough preventative maintenance.

Here are some helpful tips and reminders for good house maintenance for the whole year round.

Keep It Regular

Be a regular checker. Periodic maintenance—at least every three months—is a foolproof way to prevent minor issues from becoming a big expense. Initiating repairs, replacement, or renovation right away will spare you from worse hassles.

In that regard, the least checked facilities and fixtures are basement bathrooms, faucets, smoke detectors, alarms, garage door systems, water heaters, GFCIs or ground-fault circuit interrupters, fire extinguishers, dryer vents, showerheads, sinks, and water softener salt levels.

Seasonal Maintenance

It is best to start each season with a preliminary check. Be prepared to face each seasonal change with accompanying maintenance fit for each specific year-period.

Winter stops us from external repairs from the danger of extreme cold, snow, and icy surfaces. It is the best time to clean indoors as they tend to have less maintenance during other seasons. 

Outdoors, do minimal maintenance for maximum benefits of home maintenance. Clear gutters and lower roofs, check lawns periodically for pool buildup, examine possibly frozen hose bibs or faucets, remove any fallen tree branches on your power lines, and ensure the ground around the house is graded away to avoid snow and icy sludge floods.

Spring involves clearing away the effects of winter, which requires cleaning and clearing gutter drainage and the surrounding house areas. You can check dried-out roofs for any needed maintenance on parts. You can call local services for trees with grown-out branches extending to power lines. 

This is also the perfect time to install certain fixtures. Reverse ceiling fans, for example, can keep homes cooler. You can also install window-based air conditioners and check on window screens.

Summer to Fall Maintenance

Summer outdoor maintenance and checks as long as we protect ourselves from higher temperatures around midday to the early afternoon. There are fewer chances for handiwork services to be interrupted during summer. 

It is perfect for outdoor work, such as cleaning, painting, and maintaining house sidings, outside decks, wood fences, window wells, and unused water heaters. Outside drainages are also easier to create with no snow and rain.

Fall involves gearing up for the colder season. Outside, clear out leaves and other scraps from ponds and pools. This is also the time to install window screens, remove air conditioners, and set other air conditioning units to winter mode if available. 

You can also reverse ceiling fans to a clockwise run to circulate warm air from the ceiling and clear out chimneys and furnaces for winter use. Make sure to check outside for the sump pumps and winter-proof hose bibs or faucets with snow and ice protection.  

The Bottom Line

House maintenance should be regular and performed according to the seasons. These periodical changes bring in new tasks. They are also good opportunities to check, maintain, repair, and renovate different parts of your home. Never wait for it to get worse!

Home repairs are the specialty of Gillespie Handyman. If you’re making changes or repairs in your Ottawa home, you might as well put your trust in the local trusty handyman to do the correct job. Call us today to learn more about our affordable pricing.