Protecting The Exterior Of Your Home This Winter
We are well and truly in the middle of winter and temperatures most mornings are in the minus. It’s definitely becoming very cold, and if you are anything like me you will be considering hibernation until spring comes around!
It would be very nice to just sit indoors with the heating on under a blanket. If only! If you are a homeowner, maintenance of the exterior of your home is something that you simply have to do. The last thing you want happening is to have problems inside of your home because you have neglected the outside of your home.
Here are a few tips you can use to protect the exterior of your home during the UK’s long winter months.
1. Water Pipes
Nowadays most homes have outside taps for watering the garden during the summer months, but many of us forget all about them during the winter. It’s vital that the water supply to the tap is turned off and any exposed pipes are lagged so there is no chance of the pipe or tap freezing and possibly even bursting.
2. Exterior Walls
During the summer we don’t even think about the exterior walls of our home, and that’s mainly because the sun is shining so quite honestly very little can go wrong. During the winter months of rain, snow, storms and just about everything that Mother Nature can throw at us, the exterior walls of our property can take a hammering. Left unprotected, cracks can materialise in the exterior walls, allowing damp and mould to infiltrate your property. UK wall coating companies like All Weather Coating use weatherproof paint to prevent this from ever happening.
3. Roof
Winter in some parts of the UK can be very harsh. Snow is commonplace and can stay around for weeks at a time, and the last thing you want is snow in your attic space caused by a cracked roof tile. I would highly recommend that you take a good look at the roof to make sure there are no damaged roof tiles. If you can’t quite cover it all yourself, you could always get a roofing company to take a look to make sure your roof is in tip-top condition for the harsh winter months. If your roof needs to be replaced, try to consider conservatory roof that is designed to retain the warmth during winter.
4. Guttering
Most of us never think about the gutters and let’s be honest none of us do anything about them unless there is a problem, but I believe in not waiting for the problem to happen, sort it out first! In autumn, as we all know, the trees lose all their leaves and a lot of those can end up in your gutters. When you combine that with moss coming off the roof, it’s a recipe for disaster. The downpipes will get blocked and with all the rain we get in the UK it will be pouring over the top of the guttering and quite possibly into the walls of the property.
I would suggest that you clean your gutters out once the trees have lost all their leaves and that all the downpipes are clear to allow rainwater to run away as it should. You can either do this yourself or employ a company to do it for you for a very small fee.
That’s four very simple tips to protect the exterior of your home. If you know of any more I would love to hear them in the comments below.
