Category: Home Improvements

Home Improvements & Maintenance
Maintaining a home

Many homeowners are not keen to commit time and money to routine home maintenance and prefer to leave things untended until they are forced to notice by unsightly and useless house elements. Such elements include patches formed on the ceiling from water leaks that are progressively getting darker by the week. The radiator that has gone cold at the top, year after year, no matter how many times it’s bled. Home maintenance is the work that you disregard, and the consequences of not doing so are likely to cost even more than the home repairs or maintenance.

What makes the situation you have to deal with at home even worse, are the housing policies in the UK. As a case in point, The UK has the oldest housing of all the countries in Western Europe: nearly 38% percent of the houses were built before 1946, and almost a fifth of them before 1919. Older houses, especially the pre-war ones, have sturdier walls which have no cavities and have sash-less windows with linings bonded air tight. They should last up to five to eight decades before they need a fresh lining, and generally, the roofs which have been poorly patched and repaired since the post-war period. Houses built in the 1960s and 70s have their own special set of issues which houses built in later years have not been spared. A case in point are the cheaper houses built in the UK in 2007. Their poor finishing is even worse, as the walls have been rendered with cement bonded to the wrong surface in the wall.

Maintenance is about timing. Get things done before the season strikes. Save your money and follow the seasons to get things done. Get gutters done before fall. Spring is the time to see to your grilles and airbricks. Check the timber to be sure it is up to par as well. Before Summer hits, get your exterior done.

You won’t do everything here, but you should do most.

Misdiagnosing Damp and Condensation

The area where homeowners get the worst advice is damp. Most of this advice comes from the people they hire to fix the problem. The worst is the advice given for what is called rising damp. This type of damp gets a chemical injection along with a £3,500 bill, and it is actually very rare. Most surveyors working on older buildings claim to see it less than once a year. There are three other likely scenarios. One of which is penetrating damp that results from a defective gutter, downpipe, or pointing. Another would be condensation due to a lack of ventilation in a building where the PVC windows have been retrofitted and no additional airflow has been added. Finally there is bridging, which happens when a path or a border that is raised on the outside of the building has ended up moving moisture above the level of the damp-proof course, which is a barrier that is used to prevent moisture from moving from the ground through a building.

The solution for each type of damp is different, and unique, and the solution for the one you actually don’t have is always expensive.

If you have damp, get a survey but do so from someone who is actually a professional surveyor and not just a salesman selling you chemical injection systems. SPAB and Historic England have guides that provide excellent survey options. The Property Care Association has legitimate survey options but be careful and ask the right questions.

Nobody likes talking about boilers and heating.

A gas boiler should get a service performed every year. This should be done for warranty purposes, and because the manufacturer says so. However, the real reason a gas boiler gets serviced is because a boiler that is older than 12 years and has never been serviced will be the boiler that breaks on a winter holiday. The service itself is dependent on when you book the appointment. In October the cost is 80-120, and in January when the service companies are the busiest it can be over 150.

Heat pumps are becoming a common talking point with the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant (Air-source units are £7,500) making their initial costs more palatable. They do require more consideration and prep than your average boiler installation. The operative temperatures are lower and radiator sizing is different. It is good practice to understand the intricacies involved in heat pumps before your boiler gives in rather than scrambling and trying to understand after the fact.

Little things that are actually not that expensive.

Before windows lose their integrity, window seals do first. Bath mastic decomposes and evaporates. Sink sealing goes from being a pristine white to an ugly brown. Doors which have once shut without effort, now swing open due to dropping hinges. It is completely reasonable to expect that these don’t stay confined to minor inconveniences. Other problems will arise, compounding the first. The auxiliary issues will lead to even bigger issues which may require the replacement of entire structures (in this instance, the window).

The greatest returns come from investments that are not immediately gratifying, and neither are the investments we make on our homes. The investment we make in maintaining our homes leads to the greatest long term benefits, with even the smallest things adding up.