February is just around the corner, and that means that winter is nearly over. For most people, the end of winter is a welcome relief. As with any change in season, there is always much to be done to prepare your home for a drastic change in temperature. While preparing for winter can be depressing for a lot of people, preparing for summer can be a very exciting time. Summer means barbecues, warm summer nights, and typically some sort of vacation.
Here are four ways to get your home and all those in it prepared so you can hit the ground running when summer finally arrives.
Prepare your sprinklers
Most people do not fully understand how their sprinkler systems work. They simply set the timer, and the sprinklers come on at a specific time. Unfortunately, winter can be extremely hard on sprinkling systems, and often summer will arrive but sprinkling systems will not come on. A sprinkler system may appear pretty complicated to some people, but sprinklers are actually fairly basic things.
It may be a good time to start checking your sprinkler heads for any obstructions that may have arrived with the winter. If you live in a place where winter seems to last forever, February may be too early, but in many places February is just about the right time to start checking your sprinkler heads. You will also want to check the valves to make sure that they function properly. To do this, you simply need to turn on your sprinkler system and let it run through each station one time.
Prepare for spring cleaning
For some people, spring cleaning is a dreaded moment. But for many other people, it is a welcome opportunity to air things out and get organized before summer arrives. Spring cleaning can be a long, drawn-out, awful process, or it can be a well-organized, single-day activity if everything is planned ahead.
Start planning your spring cleaning schedule now. If you have kids or other household members, it will be helpful to start making a schedule for each person’s tasks and getting everything worked out. Once the day arrives, everyone can hit the ground running, and the tasks can all be done before evening. You can then plan a fun activity to do at the end of the day so that everyone has something to look forward to. Here is a useful checklist for building your spring cleaning plan.
Plumbing
Plumbing is something that most of us prefer to ignore. Unfortunately, if you ignore something like your water heater for too long, it will force you to pay attention to it with multiple expenses and perhaps even a disaster. To avoid this, it is important to do a visual inspection of your water heater at the end of each winter. You will want to look at your supply line and see if everything is running smoothly.
You will also want to check all of the other plumbing items in your home. This includes bathrooms, washing machines, dishwashers, sinks and tubs, and any outdoor hoses you may have. What you are looking for is any sign that the item is corroding or deteriorating quickly. You can find a fairly good list here of all of the plumbing fixtures to check and what to look for.
Ceiling fan
This is an incredibly small step that almost everybody forgets to do at the end of winter and the end of summer. You need to change the direction of your ceiling fan at the end of every winter. In the summer, you want your ceiling fan to blow air down to make everyone feel cooler, but in the winter, you want just the opposite. Most ceiling fans have a small button on the top which allows you to change the direction. You may need a ladder, but this is still the easiest step.
It is never too early to start preparing. Don’t waste beautiful summer days doing cleaning work and stuff of that nature. Get it all done in the winter when you have to be indoors anyway, then spend your summer outside, enjoying the beautiful world.
