Dear Claire: What are Some Summer Home Maintenance Tips?

Summer Home Maintenance Tips to Keep Your House in Top Shape

Today we’ll be addressing summer maintenance tips and what you should do, what kind of fun you should have this summer, in addition to just hanging out in the garden and chillaxing.

There are several things that you should probably do and we have some videos to show you these things, but I’m going to just give you a quick list of the things. I want you to go around your house and check things out as well as keep your eyes on them. A few small things to do is vacuum under and around the fridge. Your fridge is working really hard right now, especially if you don’t have air conditioning. It’s working really hard to keep your food cool and with COVID, you probably have a lot of food packed in there. I know I do more than we normally do. You are going to want to pull your fridge out if it’s in like a sort of a recessed box. You can pull it out and vacuum underneath it all around … you’re going to find all kinds of disgustingness. It seems like a very simple thing to do and it is going to help a lot to make sure your fridge functions more efficiently. It will also prolong the useful life of your fridge, so it’s important.

Check your sprinklers. I don’t actually have sprinklers but if you have those sort that leach water into the soil as you just hook up the hose to them and they’ll leach water into the soil, those sprinklers can break especially over the winter if we’ve had a cold winter. We didn’t have a terrible winter; however, they can freeze and thaw and spring leaks. You’ll want to turn on your sprinkler system or connect to your leaching hoses and check them all for leaks. Personally, what I did was hook it up to one of those and then I flooded my basement because I had a big hole in it, and I didn’t notice it. So, learn from the best!

Check for standing water. This is a big one. I actually have a little free-standing pond in my backyard and I get these mosquito things at the local garden store that kill mosquitoes, but you’re going to find all kinds of weird things that you’ve left over the winter that have been collecting little pools of water and those little pools of water when we’re in the temperatures that we’re in right now will grow droves of mosquitoes and you do not want that. Again, an easy tip is to just let it evaporate, and then you’re good.

Change your filters. One of the things I recommend, and you can check out our YouTube channel to find the video for this topic. It’ll show you that you want to change your filters, especially if you don’t have AC and your turning on the furnace fan to just circulate cool air from outside to cool down your house every night. You’re going to want to make sure your filters are clean because there’s a lot of pollen and a lot of particulates in the air. So don’t forget to change that. People forget to change that because you’re not running your furnace and so they think, “Oh, it’s not important.” But it is and especially if you’re running AC you want to make sure your filters are clean because it can damage the furnace part that is circulating the air.
Check out your deck, especially before you have friends over. You want to make sure it’s structurally sound. You’re not looking for anything technical, you’re just going to look underneath it and check for cracks or things that look weird. If you find something weird, call me. I’m happy to look at it for you and send you some good recommendations for people that can help you.

Last but not least, the most important thing is your grill. I pulled mine out last night and it was disgusting. You want to clean all the grates of course and clean all the burners and all that stuff needs to be cleaned. Additionally, you want to check your propane tank because invariably when you have something you want to grill and turn on the grill, the tank will run out of propane or gas. Check and make sure that is full. Some tanks will have a sort of thing on the side of it that you can tell how full it is, but most of them don’t have that. You just have to pick it up. If it’s light, it’s not full. You should probably check the line from the tank to the grill itself, and you can do that super easily. You take some water and some soap and just line that hose up and turn on the gas and see if you see any bubbles coming up. That’s a real easy way to tell whether there’s a leak in your gas grill, and that part is usually really inexpensive to fix. Just unscrew it on both sides and replace it.

We’re going to have all kinds of videos for you on our YouTube channel as far as maintenance goes, but I hope you enjoy the summer now that we have some warm weather. Of course, reach out with any questions that you might have and I’m happy to help and I’d be happy to chat with you. Anyway, have a wonderful day and we will talk to you soon. Take care. Bye Bye.

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