How to Prepare Your Home For this Autumn

Essential Jobs around the home for Autumn

Get your gutters cleaned
Now’s the time to clear gutters of moss, leaves and twigs and get broken guttering fixed. Blockages and leaks can cause water to drip – or, worse, run - down the side of your house’s external masonry. If moisture is then drawn through a solid wall, it can lead to damp on internal walls. Use a reputable gutter cleaning or fitting company in your area.
You can use a pair of binoculars to check for signs of damage to gutters safely. — Get your gutters cleaned Now’s the time to clear gutters of moss, leaves and twigs and get broken guttering fixed. Blockages and leaks can cause water to drip – or, worse, run - down the side of your house’s external masonry. If moisture is then drawn through a solid wall, it can lead to damp on internal walls. Use a reputable gutter cleaning or fitting company in your area. You can use a pair of binoculars to check for signs of damage to gutters safely.

2. Clear drains of fallen leaves
While you’re at it, an easier, ladder-free job to tackle yourself is clearing external drains of fallen leaves, grass cuttings or any other garden debris that has found its way in there. Again, this will stop rainwater collecting where it shouldn’t and causing damage or inconvenience. — 2. Clear drains of fallen leaves While you’re at it, an easier, ladder-free job to tackle yourself is clearing external drains of fallen leaves, grass cuttings or any other garden debris that has found its way in there. Again, this will stop rainwater collecting where it shouldn’t and causing damage or inconvenience.

3. Check doors, windows and fireplaces for draughts Draft-proofing your home is relatively cheap and easy and can shave money off your yearly energy bill. Check around windows and doors for gaps that let cold air in and warm air out, around loft hatches and around pipework that leads outside. Self-adhesive foam tape is straightforward to fit around windows but a plastic or metal strip with a brush or wiper attached is likely to last longer and is a better bet for doors or loft hatches. Gaps around pipework that runs through an external wall can be filled with a silicone sealant or expanding polyurethane foam. Ask at your local hardware store for advice.

4. Launder summer clothes Unless you are lucky enough to have unlimited wardrobe space, now is the time when you may be thinking of packing away your summer clothes. The larvae of the common clothes moth and brown house moth can wreak havoc on clothes, soft furnishings and carpets year-round. But as females are particularly attracted to garments with traces of sweat on them, it’s worth laundering summer outfits thoroughly before storing them away until next year.

5. Check your carpets Autumn is the time when carpet beetle larvae hatch and start to chomp their way through wool carpets and feather-filled soft furnishings. Check your carpets for these greedy creamy white grubs, paying particular attention to dark, seldom-disturbed places such as underneath or behind heavy furniture and along skirting boards. Give these areas an especially thorough vacuum. Abandoned bird nests in the attic can also attract carpet beetles, so check your loft, too.

6. Get your boiler serviced Don’t wait until you actually need your central heating to check if everything is working as it should. Call in a professional now, before they get busy when the temperature drops. Use a qualified, registered engineer or business in your area.

-Abby Lawler, TY student

How to Prepare Your Home For this Autumn

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