Spring into Spring (Maintain that Home!)
Winter is a the toddlers of seasons. Near the beginning the cold fronts and snow are exciting and full of cuddly holidays, but the further into the season you go, you see that the storms are bleak tantrums that exhaust you, not to mention the beating it does to your home.
Spring maintenance is important because it can set the tone for your home for the rest of the year. If you miss some of these steps, your yard wont be green, you could have some water damage, you could have some wood rot, or bug infestations. It can give you just a headache of repairs in the future. Note, this is just going to be mostly a checklist for exterior maintenance in the spring. I'll get you ideas for cleaning and maintenance items on the inside of your home in the future.
Clean Debris
Check for Water Damage
Spray for Bugs and look for rodents
Check Sprinklers
Fertilize Your Yard
Service your HVAC
This list should take you one of your days off to complete unless you find some major repairs. Do not draw it out, because like I said it could potentially lead to other issues in the future.
Clean Debris
You probably did a little of this through the fall, but when it started getting colder and colder, going outside seemed less enticing. Especially to do chores. So there is going to be
old wet leaves, maybe some blown in garbage, and more. Go through your yard and clean it up. Check on your roof for broken branches and debris. Clean your gutters so that when the spring rain comes your gutters can drain properly and not cause flooding in your home. Look in you window wells and clean them out so that no moisture gets through your windows. Check the corners of your yard where the wind will blow all manner of objects. This will make your yard feel neat and look nicer.
Check for Water Damage
Winter has warm day and cold day. You have snow packed on your roof and then you will have it all melt. If you had a place were water could pool up and leak, you may not have seen it on the inside of your home yet, but it is wreaking havoc. The major areas to check are are your gutters/eaves on your home, near any windows and doors, around the foundation, and along a deck (especially where it attaches to your home). It may be a good time to also check in the attic and see if you can spot any water damage from a roof leak. (Just poke your head in the attic, if you take a misstep you could put a hole in your ceiling.) If you spot any water damage make a note of it so the next time it there is a large amount of rain, you know to check those areas and see if they are wet on the inside and you have a current leak or an old one that has already been fixed.
Spray for Bugs and look for rodents
It is spring. That is when wildlife comes out from hiding and starts living again. It's nice to hear the birds and to see chipmunks and squirrels, but along comes bugs. Spiders, ants, cockroaches, termites, and more. Most people don't enjoy the company of these species and so we have insecticide. What I have found works well is a certain spray that you put around your yard (usually attaches to a hose and creates a mist you spray around) and one that your spray around the whole perimeter of your home, inside and out (especially at entrances and windows). The combination of both of those usually does the trick from me and I pick both up from home depot or they have them here at Ace. Make sure that when you're spraying, children and pets don't play in it for about a day. If you have a termite problem, you will need to hire an exterminator (They do major damage to your property.) Rodents and sometimes even birds, can burrow their way into your home. Most commonly they do that from the eaves into the attic or through a crawl space. They can be very difficult to remove and I suggest hiring a professional for that job.
Check Sprinklers
Buckle up, this one can be a project. They usually require some repairs and adjusting every year.
A lot of homes in Brigham have flood irrigation. That is great! Some homes fully use that to water their lawn. I've found most brick rambler have a sprinkler system even if they have irrigation. Irrigation takes minimal maintenance. Check your tunnel and make sure it is clear for water to go through. Cats will sometime hide in there. Next if your have sprinklers you will want to test all of them. Every station and head. Get ready to get wet.
Your first thing to do is to turn your water on to your sprinklers. If your water is already on and you don't have any major water logged areas in your lawn, then you dodged a bullet and didn't have your main line burst! I suggest shutting it off before freezing temperatures hit in the fall. Once you have the water on, go around to your irrigation boxes (usually the green ones in the yard) and check all your sprinkler valves. See if they are leaking now that they should have water pressure in them.
Now you want to check each station and head to see if they are leaking. There are two ways to do this. Manually or Electronically. Manually you turn the one valve on at a time in your irrigation box and go and check those heads. Electronically you go to your timer and run each station for 2-5 minutes (enough time to check each head and to check the valve). I prefer manually, because then I know which valve to check. If you find broken valves or heads, fix them before continually running your system through the year, or your will have an expensive water bill especially if it is your main line. (usually Brigham City will warn you if you are consuming large amounts of water.) If you start a station and it appears to have low pressure, you most likely have a leak. If you can't find the broken head and none of the valves are broken but you still have low pressure, that means one of your lines are leaking.
Another thing to check, is the height of your sprinklers. Typically, over long periods of time, your sprinkler heads will sink into the ground making it so that they don't cover the radius they need to cover to water your lawn. The top of the sprinkler (when it isn't popped up) should be about even with the dirt in the ground ( not the grass height). If it is too high, you'll bust it when you are mowing your lawn.
Fertilize Your Lawn
Its spring and your lawn has been dormant for probably about 4-5 months now. It needs some help perking up. If you miss doing this, it could mean a yellow lawn through the summer heat. So don't miss it!
There are lots of different ways to do this and many different products to use. Sometimes it can take going through a couple seasons to figure out what your particular yard needs. But there are companies who specialize in getting you a green yard.
I typically go to ace or tractor supply and get their 4 step fertilizer. There will also be some type of yard grow that will help get your grass nutrition that you'll want. You'll want to do those soon so it can start greening up. Then in the next couple of weeks you'll want some weed control. You want to do this before you see all the crab grass and weeds coming in. It doesn't kill them but prevents their seeds from taking root. So do that at the beginning of the season before your yard is over grown.
Service your HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning)
For goodness sake! Change your furnace filter. There are so many clients I work with or homes that I've shown and when we inspect that furnace filter, it is filthy. You should change is every 3 months, four times a year. Do it in March, June, September and December. But why? My furnace is still working! Yeah it will still pump air through but if that filter is filthy then its like us humans breathing through our mask rather than without a mask. It's easier to breathe without having something blocking the airflow. It takes more work. If your filter isn't changed often enough, it'll shorten the life of your furnace and actually make your utility bill go up because of the extra work your furnace is doing.
Check your A/C Unit and make sure it is clean. Nothing inside of it and blocking the fan. Make sure the fan can turn freely. Run your furnace and sit near it and see if it is making any odd noises.
Once a year I suggest getting your HVAC serviced. Spring time is a great time to do that, since you were running it through the whole winter to keep your house warm it probably needs a cleaning and you want to make sure your A/C is most likely going to function.
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So that's it. That's the list of some exterior (well mostly) maintenance you should be doing on your home in the spring! Hope this was a good reminder. Unless you spot an issue this should only take one of your days off and it will make your future work, that much easier and cheaper.
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