Tips To Avoid Home Emergencies
Having a home is an exciting life event, and it can be a big milestone purchasing your first one. It can also be a little daunting as you’re now responsible for your home, rather than the landlord when you were renting. Preventing your property from home emergencies is one way of keeping everything in working order, so here are a few suggestions of what to do.
Clean Out The Gutters
Gutter cleaning is something you should do regularly, particularly over autumn and winter when leaves fall. A lot of the debris can get blow into the guttering, and if it isn’t cleaned out, then it can get blocked. Water can then build up and actually cause structural damage to the property and even damp if the water isn’t flowing down the guttering properly. So you certainly want to avoid this from happening! It’s a grim job, but someone has to do it.
Unblock Drains
It’s also important to keep your internal pipes clean, so you take steps to do this between two to four times a year. Use a drain unblocker to flush out all the rubbish that gets built up down your bathtub drain and kitchen drain. If you often find you’re scraping out hair or washing food down the drain, you might need to do this a little more regularly.
Get Your Gas Serviced
Keeping you and your household safe is the most important thing, so get your gas appliances serviced at least every year, to check for any faults or potential issues with the boiler, radiators, oven etc. When we roll into the colder months of the year, a faulty boiler is not what you want, so if you need to get it replaced or fix, do it immediately.
Insulate The Pipes
Frozen or burst pipes is another common home emergency and one that can be avoided if the necessary precautions are taken. You should run your heating regularly to keep the pipes warm, and if they’re exposed to the elements, you can wrap insulation around your pipes to add an extra layer of defence against the cold. Once pipes have burst, this can cause flooding in the home and is quite costly to replace.
Keep Your Kitchen Clean
A lot of home incidents tend to happen in the kitchen, whether it’s a toaster catching fire or having something flammable near an open flame. It’s important to keep the kitchen clean at all times to prevent anything dreadful happening. Keep your toaster out in the open and switched off at the plug. Any cookbooks or flammable items near an oven should be moved and stored away.
Always remember to check the batteries in the smoke alarm too, especially if it’s gone off a few times. You don’t want something to happen, and the smoke alarm doesn’t go off!
Home emergencies do happen, and sometimes you can’t prevent them. However, these are just a few steps you can take to protect your home from harm.