Seasonal home maintenance checklist

A house rarely fails without warning. The gutter that overflows in November has been holding leaves since September, and the pipe that bursts in a cold snap was left bare for years. Working through the same round of checks each season takes a few weekends a year and catches most problems while they are still small.

Spring: find out what winter did

Walk the outside of the house after heavy rain and look for water where it should not be. Staining under gutters, damp patches on brickwork and a tide mark at the base of a wall all point at drainage that has stopped working. Inside, check ceilings below bathrooms for faint brown rings and open windows in rooms that have been shut since autumn. A musty spare bedroom usually means a leak, a blocked air brick or dead ventilation rather than stale air.

Work through whatever winter left loose. Fence posts, path slabs, gate hinges and shed doors that have dropped are quick fixes in dry weather and bigger jobs once autumn rain arrives. Check external paintwork for flaking on sills and frames, since bare timber soaks up water fast, and pull soil back from any air brick so the floor void can breathe.

• Gutters - Pour water into a downpipe and confirm it discharges away from the wall.
• Air bricks - Clear soil, gravel and planters. Blocked vents are a common cause of damp floorboards.

Summer: use the dry weather

Warm, settled weather is the only reliable time for jobs that need surfaces to dry. External woodwork takes paint properly in summer and badly in October, when moisture sits under the film and lifts it off within a year. Decking and fencing take stain far better after a few dry days, so plan those weekends for late June rather than the first week of September.

This is also the window for roof repairs. A roofer can work safely and see the whole covering, and any leak found now has months to dry out before winter. If a slipped tile or a cracked mastic joint has been on your list since spring, summer is cheaper than an emergency call-out in January.

• Timber - Sand bare patches, prime, then paint when no rain is forecast for a day.
• Surface drains - Lift gully grates and check run-off reaches the drain rather than pooling.

Autumn: the season where timing matters

Autumn is the one season where the order of jobs decides whether they work. Clear gutters after the leaves have fallen but before the first hard frost, because a blocked gutter sends water into the wall instead of away from it. Lagging pipes once the temperature has already dropped is a job done with cold hands on a ladder in the wind.

Turn the heating on properly in October rather than waiting for the first cold week. A boiler that has sat idle for six months shows its faults on the first cold morning, and it is far easier to get an engineer out in mild weather than during a cold snap, when every plumber in the area has a waiting list.

• Radiators - Cold spots at the top mean trapped air. Bleed until water appears, then check pressure.
• Pipe lagging - Loft, garage and unheated extensions first, especially near cold air bricks.

Winter: prevent damage, do not chase it

Winter is about avoiding harm rather than fixing it. Find your inside stopcock and turn it both ways so it does not seize, and show everyone in the house where it is. If the house will be empty for more than a day or two in freezing weather, leave the heating on a low setting rather than off, and close the loft hatch to stop warm air condensing on cold roof timbers.

Keep air bricks and trickle vents clear even when you are trying to cut draughts. Sealing a house up traps moisture inside, and that moisture turns up as mould on external wall corners by February. Fit draught seals at windows and doors instead of blocking ventilation, and thaw a frozen condensate pipe with warm water rather than boiling water.

• Stopcock - Keep a torch and towel nearby. A seized valve during a burst is miserable.
• Alarms - Test smoke and carbon monoxide alarms monthly and replace the batteries properly.

The checks that run all year

Some tasks do not belong to a season. A monthly walk around the outside of the house takes ten minutes and catches changes you would miss if you only looked twice a year. Photograph anything that looks new, since a hairline crack is much easier to judge against last month's picture than against memory. A sudden rise in a water bill usually means a leak, and a meter that spins with nothing running is the same signal.

Keep a simple log of what was done and when. Boiler services, gutter clears, alarm tests and every repair involving a trade get a line. When you sell, or when an insurer asks what maintenance has been carried out, that log answers the question without an argument. Twice a year, look in the loft for daylight through the roof, damp staining and rodent droppings.

• Maintenance log - Date, job, who did it. It supports warranty, insurance and sale questions.
• Loft - Check twice yearly. Insulation should not be blocking the eaves ventilation.