Home Maintenance Series Part 3- Outdoor Maintenance

Welcome back to part three of our Home Maintenance series, where we dive into outdoor home maintenance and the key things you should be inspecting once a year to keep your home in good working condition. Follow along as we walk through a top-down list of essential annual tasks.

Resources: https://healthyhomes.ces.ncsu.edu/

https://www.fcs.uga.edu/docs/HomeMaintChecklist_update_6.21.pdf

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/preventative-home-maintenance

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Extension Connection Podcast, where we connect our listeners to research-based resources to help them build better lives. Hey everyone, this is Lindsay Edwards, your family consumer science extension agent in Polk County. And today we're gonna conclude our three-part series on home maintenance and focus on the outside of our home. What can we do to maintain the outside of our home on a yearly basis to ensure that everything is working properly and that we are saving money by hopefully preventing larger things from happening? Again, if you haven't listened to the other two podcasts in this series, I would encourage you to go back and do that. Our first was about cleaning and decluttering our home, and the second was about indoor home maintenance. But today, we're gonna solely focus on the outside of our homes. So when we're doing inspections or doing any kind of home maintenance on the outside of our home, we want to start from the top down. And what I mean by that is we wanna go outside and start from our roof and work our way down our house to ensure that, everything is working as it should be. I know after the hurricane, we've had a lot more people concerned about trees that might be over their houses or close to their roofs that have the potential of falling back. So that's also a good place to start making sure that you have any trees that are leaning towards your home cut back, or even branches or limbs. And this will help to protect your roof and to ensure that nothing does fall on your house with any high winds that we have. Always be careful when dealing with large trees. Hiring a licensed tree trimming company might be a really good idea to ensure that everything is being removed and safely taken down to the ground. At least once a year, examine your roof. If you have shingles, make sure that they look like they are all in good condition and that you don't see any curled damage or loose edges. Also, ensure that you don't see any water damage. Looking around your chimney and also your gutters to make sure that those are working in good condition and that you don't see any moisture buildup or anything wrong around those areas is good as well. Make sure that any vents coming out of your roof are free of any, leaves or debris that might have gotten in there during the fall. And I know we've already talked about gutters in our last episode, but I do wanna reiterate that you need to clean those gutters out to ensure that water's moving away from your home and not settling at the bottom. Moving down the house, make sure that if you have a brick home, you're checking for cracks or loose joints. For houses with siding, make sure that nothing is loose and that you're not missing any pieces of siding. Check for paint that's chipping, and if needed, repaint. Paint can sometimes be an indicator that there may be water damage behind it, cracking, blistering, or even peeling or flaking can all be signs of water damage underneath the paint. So make sure that you are at least examining it to see if there's any signs. Exterior paint generally is good for between five to 15 years, depending on the type of materials you use, the amount of sun exposure, weather, and type of siding that you have. Generally, wood siding will need to be painted more often than brick or stucco. And paint is important to keep in good condition, especially on wood because it creates a barrier from the moisture as well as the UV raves and increases the lifespan of your home. Checking all your windows from the outside to make sure that they are all sealed properly and that they are all opening and closing properly is important as well. Check any screens that you might have to ensure that there's no cracks or rips. Screens are a great way to prevent pests from entering your home, so keeping them in working condition without any holes is very important. Go ahead also to clean the outside of your windows. Cleaning the windows actually makes them last longer by removing dirt and debris that can damage the glass and also removing growth that will help prevent any mold from going on the windows. I've mentioned this before, but I went to an environmental house class that our county put on, and they showed a picture of a car that had mold on the outside of it. Now, mold doesn't actually grow on a vehicle or something like glass, but if you have dirt and debris on top of those things, mold can then attach itself to the dirt and debris and grow, like a window. If I have dirt and debris on my window, mold can attach itself to that and grow on it. So keeping those clean, cleaning off the outside and the inside of your windows is very important. Examine any weather stripping on the doors or around the windows to make sure that it's still in, in working order and that it's preventing moisture from getting into your house. Testing locks on the door. According to the Healthy Home's website, which I will link in the show notes, an exterior door should have at least a one-inch deadbolt on, it for safety. Going down to the foundation, again, you're looking for any cracks or crumbling mortar, and be aware if you see any water on the foundation. Water should always be draining away from the home, so we want to ensure that we don't have any water sitting. It might be a good idea to go out after a rainstorm a couple hours after and see if you have a lot of standing water around the foundation of your home. You wanna try to avoid that or mitigate that problem. Also examine for pests and signs of termite damage. Regular pest control is a good defense. I suggest finding a pest control operator that you trust and having them come spray regularly to ensure that you're keeping pests away from your home. They also will inspect your home to ensure that there is no termite damage or other types of pests that might be burrowing into your woods such as carpenter bees. Check any wooden structural members of your home, such as columns, beans, or joists to make sure that the wood is still in good condition and that there's, again, no signs of those pests or wood decay. Wood decay can be from pests themselves, but also mold can ruin wood, so ensuring that it's all free from decay and working order is super important. Keeping leaves and debris away from a foundation of a home and away from your air conditioning unit and heating unit is also important. the leaves themselves can hold moisture, and so we wanna get those away from that foundation. Examine either your basement or your foundation walls for signs of moistures. If you have a crawl space, make sure that there's a good vapor barrier and that it is still in good condition. It should cover 100% of your crawl space. You wanna look for any signs of moisture leaks, damage, or mold in that crawl space. When dealing with outdoor porches, you wanna make sure that we clean them off. Again, after we have spring in Polk County, you end up having pollen on just about everything. And I think I have mentioned this in a previous cleaning episode, but it's a really good idea to wait till around May to get off all of that pollen, maybe still have some leaves or different things from different seasons on your porch so that they can be used. Cleaning off furniture, using a pressure washer, cleaning off the side of your house, depending on what kind of material you have might be a good idea. Also doing things like wiping down screens, and again, I've already said it, but cleaning off your windows. If you have a grill area, cleaning that really well, maybe if you haven't used your grill in a while, cleaning it, and then turning it on to ensure everything is still working properly also, make sure that my stairs around my home are, are pressure washed or clean to make sure that anything that might have been slippery or hazardous is cleaned off. Now, when dealing with outdoor plants, make sure you weed any beds and trim any bushes or trees away from your foundation wall. Also, clean out anything that's dead, any plants that are dead, or that might be against the foundation. And I'm not gonna go deep into the topic of plants or anything like that because that is not my expertise, but if you do have any questions about your yards, you can always call us and ask to speak to our horticulture agent or visit the North Carolina Cooperative Extension website and look up the topics that you're searching for. Again, just like last month, I'm sure I'm missing many things that we need to do for home maintenance around our house. These are just some broad topics that you can use to go around your house, do your annual inspection, do your annual cleaning to ensure that the outside of your house is still in working order to hopefully prevent those huge costs down the road. I want to thank you for listening to my podcast today, and I look forward to talking to you next month on the Extension Connection Podcast.