Water Cooler: Prepare your home for fall

There’s more to getting your home ready for fall than decorating with spiced candles, fuzzy throws, pumpkins and other cute squash. Unfortunately, preparing a home for the colder seasons takes a bit more elbow grease than that, but it’s incredibly worthwhile.

Clean the gutters – Gutters are often an unsung hero of the home. They drain thousands of gallons of water from your roof annually. If they happen to get clogged, you very well could end up with some flooding issues and water damage. Before the rains return to the Inland Northwest, it’s worth climbing up there and taking a peak at what needs done. Clean them out, and if need be, invest some money in replacing the damaged gutters.

Check for drafts – The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 25-30% of heating energy use quite literally goes right out the window. There are a few ways to better insulate your doors and windows. Weather stripping is a simple and effective way to help seal drafty cracks. To check for draft issues, close a strip of paper in the door or window in question. If it slides around easily, you could use an update on the weather stripping. You can also purchase film for insulating windows, or for a more inexpensive option you can use plastic food film. YouTube has a ton of tutorial videos on how to apply this film. Once the weather gets cold enough that you’re sure you won’t be opening up the windows anymore for the season, go ahead and throw some up. If you have windows that you don’t use as often, you can apply film to those even earlier.

Change your filters – Clogged filters lead to more expensive heating bills. Some recommend even changing filters monthly rather than just seasonally. After this recent bout of wildfire smoke the Inland Northwest has experienced, it’s an especially good idea to swap out the filters for new ones. To avoid waste and save a little extra money, you can vacuum disposable filters once before replacing, and foam filters can be vacuumed instead of being replaced.

Tend the lawn – Though the grass may brown and disappear altogether under a blanket of snow, that doesn’t mean the roots aren’t active. Help your grass look its best come next spring by preparing it in the fall. Aerate the lawn either with a mechanical aerator or with aeration shoes. This prevents the soil from become compacted and will result in a much healthier environment for grass to thrive, allowing for oxygen and nutrients to cycle through the turf. After aerating, sprinkle your yard with a lot of grass seed. The cool and damp conditions of fall will allow for easy germination and helps your lawn become thick and established for next year. Test your soil so that any pH problems and nutrient deficiencies can be addressed in advance.

Fix concrete cracks – If you have lived in this area for even one cold season, you will be more familiar with pot holes than you wanted to be. Cracks in the driveway and other walking paths around the home will follow the same pattern as the roads and only worsen as the temperatures fluctuate and become colder. Water will seep into those cracks and expand, making them bigger problems for next year. If these cracks continue to be neglected, you will eventually have a lot of crumbling concrete on your hands.