Crucial home maintenance becomes necessary once seasons begin to change. As the fall season settles, you want to prepare your home to welcome falling leaves, cooler weather, and winter storms, ultimately.
Thankfully, you can practice a handful of fall home maintenance tips in this guide without hiring a professional and preserve your home from potentially dangerous or costly harm due to harsh weather conditions. Follow our fall home maintenance checklist!
Table of contents
Why Fall Home Maintenance Matters
Seasonal maintenance, particularly in the fall, helps to prevent costly home repairs and ensure your home is winter-ready. However, you’d need an all-around fall home maintenance list to plan and execute your fall maintenance successfully.
Meanwhile, a holistic fall checklist for homeowners caters to internal and external aspects of the facility. That way, you can ensure your home looks presentable, energy-efficient, and safe all season long.
Exterior Fall Maintenance Checklist
This section of the home fall maintenance checklist presents an effective exterior fall maintenance checklist to help you keep your home safe and healthy during the fall. External fall maintenance tips range from cleaning gutters to sealing gaps/cracks in walls and inspecting roof/chimney for damage.
Inspect and Clean Gutters and Downspouts
It doesn’t matter whether there is only debris or leaves there, you want to keep all gutters and downspouts around your property clear. Your gutters and downspouts help you effectively drain water away from your property.
So, you don’t want them blocked by grasses, leaves, or other items. Note that dormant water can quickly pool up to grow mold and bacteria. Worse still, water buildup can affect foundational issues in your property.
Check the Roof and Chimney for Damage
Your roof keeps you dry and safe at home, helping you keep the house comfy and insulated all season long. However, you want one of your biggest exterior security home fixtures protected by regularly inspecting it for damage. Remember, it’s always proper to spot damages before they spiral into problems.
Inspect the shingles for any missing, damaged, or curled shingles. Also look out for broken nails, staples, and dents on the shingles’ surface. Assess the severity of any damage once you spot any damage to determine prospective solutions. Simpler dents or rarely visible damage may not come under your insurance coverage so you can touch those areas using your toolkit. Per your toolkit, check out VEVOR’s quality ladder to assist in your DIY project or to beef up your home’s equipment.
If it’s rather complicated damage, consider contacting a professional or insurance provider to fix issues. Also look out for your chimney, vent pipes, and skylights. Ensuring they’re protected against weather elements to avoid leaks. Consider reporting any damage to an expert, except you’re one.
Seal Cracks and Gaps in Exterior Walls
Cracks and gaps in the home’s exteriors can invite drafts and pests. You want to repair screens and inspect entryways to take out any possibility of gaps. Is there light at the bottom of the door around the threshold? Consider adjusting the seal and threshold so it snugs to the bottom of the door.
Also, check the weatherstripping for gaps and replace it if there are gaps. Check the seal around plumbing and electrical penetrations indoors, and inspect the foundations to fill any cracks or holes.
Interior Fall Maintenance Checklist
Here’s our interior fall maintenance checklist to help you prepare for the season’s weather possibilities and protect your property against potentially expensive damage.
Test and Replace Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detectors
A carbon monoxide (CO) detector is a safety device that alerts you when there’s a CO leak and helps you escape a potentially fatal situation, such as carbon monoxide poisoning. You want to test your CO detector for potential signs of weaknesses or design flaws that could impair the battery’s health or pose a safety hazard.
Meanwhile, high amounts of CO2, a byproduct of CO, means there are also high amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Also, you want to monitor the CO2 levels in the home to stay informed about the potential levels of VOCs in the home. By maintaining healthy levels of CO, CO2, and VOCs, we can keep healthier air and avoid fatal health crises.
Inspect and Service Heating Systems
Your boiler or furnace will see its highest use during winter when it’ll also likely break down. You want to inspect and tune up your furnace or boiler during the fall annually ahead of the cold winter months when your equipment becomes busy.
While most HVAC manufacturers recommend servicing your cooling/heating system annually, we recommend servicing your heating every fall before fall while your air conditioning system receives servicing every spring.
However, since various brands of HVAC maintenance tools pose different servicing challenges, we can verify that VEVOR’s HVAC maintenance tools can provide you with a seamless experience servicing your heating/cooling units.
Clean and Inspect the Fireplace and Chimney
Eliminate the chimney cap and start brushing from the top down, adding extension rods, as necessary, before cleaning. Scrub thoroughly by working the brush-up and down to eliminate all debris and creosote.
Clean the smoke shelf and firebox once you reach the bottom. Again, scrub thoroughly by working the brush up using an effective pressure washer from VEVOR or a shop vacuum to eliminate all loosened debris.
You may need to repeat the brushing process on your chimney, smoke shelf, and firebox for a thorough cleaning. Consider hiring a professional if you don’t want to run the cleanup yourself or can’t do so.
Preparing Your Yard and Garden for Fall
Your yard is a significant aspect of your home’s exterior. Besides the aesthetic appeal it gives the home front, it also provides additional health benefits in purifying the air — and possibly growing some helpful edibles.
Rake Leaves and Clean Up Debris
Take out fallen leaves as they can blanket the lawn, block sunlight, and reduce air circulation. Accumulated dry leaves can also create poor growing conditions that foster the growth of fungi and bacteria.
Leaf removal shields your grass from potential disease and insect infestation while allowing your grass to breathe and receive the necessary sunlight for photosynthesis.
Need a quick but effective fix to your lawn leaf removal or cleanup? Check out VEVOR’s leaf blowers – they’re swift, durable, and affordable, helping you do the job perfectly in good time.
Winterize Outdoor Faucets and Sprinkler Systems
Place cold-weather covers over the faucet to secure the hook or drawstring, depending on the type of cover you purchase, to winterize your outdoor faucet and provide an additional layer of protection to the home. Ensure the spigot remains completely covered while the cover remains securely tightened.
Per the sprinklers, leverage your controllers to turn off the water so they don’t freeze as the temperature drops. Turn to the backflow device if the controller fails to stop the water flow immediately. Check to see if the sprinkler has a leak, shut off the main water supply line, and drain the pipes to prevent freezing.
Prune Trees and Shrubs
Taking out dead, diseased, or damaged branches helps maintain the plant’s appearance while enhancing its growth. Similarly, cutting off dead branches or branches that interrupt pathways reduces the chances of having broken branches during snow storms.
Here’s where your pruning shears become handy. Don’t hesitate to check out VEVOR’s amazing pruning shears and tree pruners for guaranteed and seamless tree/shrub pruning during fall.
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Energy Efficiency Tips for Fall
How do you insulate your windows and doors and maintain your home’s internal temperature to cater to a highly efficient home? Here are some great ideas.
Insulate Windows and Doors
Proper insulation and sealing around the windows can help you reduce energy loss in the home. Meanwhile, insulation also helps to prevent heat transfer through the window and keeps the indoor temperature stable at all times.
That way, you can keep the indoor temperature stable and reduce the need for excessive heating/cooling to cut electricity costs. Need some recommendations on excellent tools to use? Think durable weatherstripping products from VEVOR if you need excellent products to help insulate your home and save energy efficiently.
Check and Replace Furnace Filters
A clogged filter makes an inefficient furnace system. You want to ensure your air filter isn’t clogged with dust, diet, and grime, to drive air through the home seamlessly. An efficient furnace system also helps you maintain efficient energy costs, decrease your relative carbon footprint, and beef up your budget.
You want to explore high-quality furnace filters from VEVOR to effectively and efficiently pull pollutants like dust, pollen, dirt, mold, animal fur, or bacteria, from the home’s interior.
Germs and grime will clog your filter over time, so you want to replace them often to keep the air in your home cleaner and reduce the risk of health concerns in the family.
Install a Programmable Thermostat
A programmable thermostat functions in the home like a personal assistant that helps to manage the ambiance at home. It allows you to schedule/program different temperatures for different times of the day without continuously/often adjusting the thermostat daily.
That gives plenty of potential for comfort since you have a wide spectrum of temperature options. Meanwhile, you also save up to 2% on your bills for every degree to raise/lower during the summer/winter respectively.
But what’s a 2% cut if the thermostat itself fails now and then or needs repairs/replacements too soon? We recommend getting VEVOR’s durable selection of thermostats for your home to save maximally and enjoy top-notch programmable thermostat functions in the house.
Safety Checks and Home Security for Fall
Homes are built for comfort and safety, among other things. You want your home to be a true haven, especially within your conscious means. Here’s the section of this fall checklist that offers some handy ideas on ratifying and maintaining your property’s security fixtures.
Inspect Home Security Systems
Here’s where to inspect your motion sensors and alarms to see that they function appropriately and offer dependable safety. Consider testing the sensors by working around the property to trigger each and verify that they operate as they should.
Suppose you wanted to verify your alarm’s effective functionality. Set the alarm as you would. Wait until the delay time expires and the alarm is set. Open a door or window connected to your alarm system and listen for the siren. Once the alarm starts ringing, wait at least 45 seconds before disarming the system.
Check Exterior Lighting and Replace Bulbs
Lighting is as protective as they’re illuminating or aesthetic. You want to check all exterior lighting in the home to ensure they’re in top shape. Replace dead bulbs to boost your home’s security using top-notch lighting solutions. Think of VEVOR’s collections for long-lasting, efficient, and excellent lighting solutions in the house.
Final Tips for a Stress-Free Fall Season
The fall brings a unique beauty to the lawn and plants – but also a firm signal that winter is nearby. You want to take action as soon as possible during Fall to avoid winter complications.
Remember to pass every item in this fall checklist home maintenance before resting on your oars and check out top-notch VEVOR home care and maintenance products to make your home fall maintenance easier.
Conclusion
This fall checklist for home maintenance summarizes vital maintenance tips to note when preparing your home’s interior and exterior ahead of winter. Remember that effective home fall maintenance helps you cut energy costs and shields you from multiple danger threats that could arise from natural or artificial causes as the temperatures fall.
Feel free to amend the checklist to suit your home’s unique needs and add fun additions like a barbecue grill to host lawn parties with family and friends. Feel free to explore an effective autumn home maintenance checklist for preparing for other seasons while you count on VEVOR’s product offerings to assist with all fall maintenance tasks.
