South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
How to prepare your home for the upcoming seasons
As the cold weather begins, you’ll want to be ready to keep your house in top condition, inside and out. Here are some tasks that will help ensure a comfortable winter and an excellent start to the following spring.
Maintenance tasks
You’ll want to pay attention to several elements in your home that are vital to staying in good shape this winter. If you haven’t had an HVAC inspection already and live in an area where you’ll be switching from cooling to heating, schedule one as soon as possible. Experts recommend an inspection and tuneup twice a year when the cooling flips to heating or vice versa. Even if you only use one or the other, it’s a good idea to get regular HVAC inspections to ensure everything is in the best order.
Get your gutters cleaned by a professional. Such cleaning is vital to continued home health, especially rolling into winter. Clogged gutters can lead to basement flooding, foundation damage and damaging ice buildup on the roof.
Perform a winterizing inspection around your house. Check doors and windows for potential air loss, especially around the edges. Use caulking and weatherstripping as needed to keep hot and cold air on the right sides of the walls. While you’re at it, keep an eye out around your foundation for cracks, nooks or crannies where pests can potentially get access to your home.
Make sure you shut down your irrigation system and clear out the water in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions.
Verify that your attic has enough insulation. Poorly insulated attics can lead to roof damage and leaks during bad weather.
Check your yard
As long as new grass is growing, continue mowing regularly. Keep your blade height at its standard setting. Cutting your lawn too short as you go into winter will stress the roots, reducing their ability to resist pests and weeds.
Fall is a great time to establish a compost pile, and it’s not hard to get off to a good start. Find a shady and dry point outdoors near a water source. Set up a bin, or simply select a drop-off point. Create a severalinch layer of leaves, branches, wood chips and twigs as a base. Then, add grass clippings, coffee grounds and vegetable or fruit scraps. Keep the layers slightly damp with water and rotate them a couple of times a month. By spring, your compost pile will have developed a dark brown, crumbly compost perfect for fertilizing.
Don’t overlook mulch, either. You probably think of mulching as work to do in the spring, but mulching in the fall offers many benefits. Mulch provides insulation to plant roots and soil during the cold months and limits erosion from snow and rain.