Property CareHome › The year in a house
Houses fail in a pattern.
A seasonal home maintenance calendar for a Cambridgeshire year. Not on a schedule, exactly. But a Cambridgeshire year asks the same things of a house every time round, and almost every expensive job we are called to began as a cheap one somebody missed in the right month. This is the whole year, written down, so you can do most of it yourself.
Neglect is rarely a decision. It is an accumulation.
A gutter overflows quietly for two autumns. The wall behind it stays damp through two winters. By the third year it is a plastering job, a decorating job and an argument with an insurer, and it started as twenty minutes on a ladder in October.
That is the whole argument for seasonal care, and it is why we would rather hand this list over than keep it to ourselves. Most of what follows you can do on a Saturday with a ladder and a cup of tea. Where a job genuinely needs someone, we have said so plainly, and where it is not worth doing at all we have said that too.
Find out what the winter did
The most useful walk round of the year. Winter has just finished testing everything, and this is when the evidence is still fresh and the repairs are still small.
- Walk the outside slowly and look up: slipped tiles, a lifted ridge, flashing that has moved
- Check gutters and downpipes ran properly through the wet months, and look for staining on the wall beneath
- Fences and gates: which posts moved in the gales, and which will not survive another winter
- Test outside taps for a split from the frost before you need them
- Open the windows properly for the first time and free anything that has swollen shut
- Look at external woodwork now, while there is time to treat it before the sun does the rest
- Sweep the patio and paths, and deal with moss before it becomes slippery in autumn
- Feed the lawn and cut the grass higher than feels right, so it roots deeper before summer
- Plant out and mulch the borders, which suppresses weeds for the whole season
- Service the mower and sharpen shears now rather than in the first heatwave
The one worth paying for. If anything looks wrong at roof level, get someone up there rather than guessing from the lawn. Nothing else on this list turns expensive faster than water getting into a roof, and nothing is cheaper to fix early.
The season for doing, not repairing
Dry weather, long evenings and warm surfaces. This is when the outside jobs actually work, and when the disruptive indoor ones are easiest to live through because you can open every window.
- Exterior decorating, which needs dry timber and a settled forecast rather than an optimistic one
- Fences, sheds and garden structures treated while the wood is genuinely dry
- Any building, joinery or decorating work indoors, because ventilation is free in July
- Hedges cut, but check for nesting birds first: it is an offence to disturb an active nest
- Keep new planting watered deeply and rarely, rather than a little every evening
- Deadhead and feed, and the borders keep going into September
- Book anything you want done before Christmas now, because everyone books in October
- Clean the outside of the windows, which nobody enjoys and everybody notices
Worth knowing. Summer is the cheapest time to have a room refreshed and the least disruptive time to live through it. It is also when trades have the most availability. Autumn is when everyone panics.
The most important six weeks of the year
If you only do one season properly, do this one. Almost every winter emergency we are called out to could have been prevented in October, usually with a ladder and twenty minutes.
- Clear the gutters, and clear them again once the last leaves are down
- Check downpipes actually run away and are not simply emptying against a wall
- Clear drains and gullies of leaves before the first real downpour
- Have the chimney swept before the first fire, not after you have already lit one
- Service the stove: rope seals, glass, firebricks and hinges
- Bleed radiators and run the heating before you need it, so a failure is an inconvenience rather than a crisis
- Lag pipes and the cold tank in the loft, which is the single cheapest insurance against a burst
- Draught-proof doors and windows now, while it is still pleasant to be working on them
- Cut back growth away from walls, gutters and paths
- Lift and store garden furniture, and drain and stow hoses before the first frost
- Check outside lighting works before it is dark at four o'clock
- Test smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and change the batteries as a habit rather than a reaction
If you do nothing else. Gutters, drains, lagging, and a swept chimney. Those four between them prevent most of what goes wrong between December and February, and all four are cheap.
Let the house tell you where it hurts
A cold, wet, windy house is an honest one. Problems you cannot find in June announce themselves in January, so the job this season is mostly to pay attention and write things down.
- On the first properly cold day, walk round and feel for draughts. You will find them in minutes
- Look for condensation patterns, especially in corners, behind wardrobes and on north walls
- Notice which rooms never warm up, and check whether the radiator or the room is at fault
- After heavy rain, look in the loft with a torch for daylight or damp staining
- Keep an eye on the ceiling below the bathroom and below any flat roof
- Watch where water sits in the garden, which tells you what the drainage is really doing
- Prune apple and pear trees while they are dormant, and cut back roses in late winter
- Plan the indoor jobs for spring rather than starting them now
- Keep a note of every small annoyance you meet. That list is the single most useful thing you can bring us
Leave it alone. Do not repoint, render, lay slabs or do anything outside involving mortar in a frost. It will fail, and you will pay twice. Wait for spring. Genuinely.
This is exactly what a care plan is
Everything above is genuinely doable yourself, and we would rather you had the list than not. But most people read it, agree with it, and then find that October arrives and the gutters do not clear themselves. That is not a character flaw. It is simply what happens to jobs that have no deadline.
A home care plan is this list, done by us, on a rhythm. We turn up when the season says so rather than when something has already gone wrong, and small problems get caught while they are still small and still cheap. If you would rather have one big look instead, the Home Health Check is a written read on the whole house, including the things we would leave alone.
Not sure what your house needs this month?
Tell us roughly what sort of house it is and what you have noticed. We will tell you what is worth doing now, what can wait, and what we would leave alone entirely.