10 Fall Projects You Can Do in 30 Minutes or Less
Fall home maintenance projects are all about protecting your home, preserving safety and comfort indoors, which help you get your home ready for winter. Grab a few tools and a half an hour now to tackle one of the following chores, and you’ll thank yourself warmly a few months down the line.
- Find your valves: Water leak emergencies are all too common over the cold weather month. Use half an hour now to locate and label every important water valve in your home, including the main water valve, water heater valve, hose valves and icemaker valves. Familiarize other family members with their locations and operation in case you’re away when disaster strikes. If you are heading out of town for a few days, get in the habit of turning off your main water valve on the way out the door, to limit any pipe breaks to the water in the pipe, as opposed to the water in the local reservoir!
- Drain the water heater: Your family will be depending on an efficient, consistent hot water supply in the coming Fall months, so prepare your hot water heater for duty. Sediment buildup on a water heater’s bottom can interfere with performance. Maintenance every six months by using the tank’s drain valve to carefully discharge a few gallons of the hot water inside.
Lubricate locks and hinges: Creaky hinges and sticking locks can spook you at exactly the wrong moment, so make the rounds with a can of WD-40. It’ll clean and lubricate metal mechanisms in one shot.- Clean and reverse ceiling fans: Now that they’re done spinning out cool comfort, resetting fans for the winter routine is an important fall maintenance project. Give fan blades a thorough dusting, and then switch them to a clockwise spin in order to push warm air downward from the ceiling.
- Test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors: This biannual maintenance is especially important before you turn on your heating system. Vacuum detectors to remove excess dust, replace the batteries, and get in the habit of using the devices’ test buttons to check their function once a month.
- Clean the humidifier: Indoor heat makes for a dry environment, and your home’s humidifier needs to be ready to balance things out. Over time, humidifiers can get clogged and stop working, or even worse, send bacteria and mold throughout the house. So go through the cleaning routine as recommended by your unit’s manufacturer. Soaking the evaporator pad in a solution of white vinegar and water often works well to dissolve mineral salts left behind as water evaporates; just be sure to rinse well after the soak so your home doesn’t end up smelling like a big salad.
- Check for roof leaks: Winter rains are comforting until they start landing inside your home, so check and protect the most likely leak points in your roof. After the first big Fall rain storm, grab a flashlight and inspect areas where protrusions such as chimneys and plumbing vent pipes meet the roof. Then pick up your binoculars and inspect the same spots from the outside, also scanning for missing shingles and loose flashing that require replacement.
Quiet kitchen cabinets: Before the Fall is over, your kitchen will soon be bustling with holiday dinners, baking projects, and house guests, so don’t let little annoyances get in the way of big plans. Clean and lubricate drawers and hinges on kitchen cabinets, and replace any catches that no longer catch.- Steady all handrails: Negotiating a snowy step or a busy indoor staircase is tricky enough without wondering if the handrail will hold steady. Make sure all inside and outside handrails are secure, and repair loose railings, posts and spindles. Indoors, loose wood spindles can be repaired by dipping a wooden toothpick in glue and wedging it in where the spindle goes into the handrail. Once the glue is dry, break off the excess toothpick or trim it away with a utility knife.
- Caulk the chimney crown: You can avoid major repair costs with a little maintenance of your masonry chimney’s crown – that cement area between the outside edge of the brick and the terra-cotta clay chimney liner. Cracks in the crown allow water to leak into the chimney, where it can cause bricks to freeze and break. An annual dose of caulking will prevent such an expensive disaster and help maintain the chimney’s structural integrity.
Fall home maintenance projects are important to make sure your home is ready for winter and the holiday events that are just around the corner. Get them done with these quick tips over the next few weekends and you’ll be ready to hibernate!