As temperatures rise and winter recedes, it’s time to prepare your house for warmer weather. Seasonal changes can affect everything from your roof and gutters to your cooling system and outdoor spaces. A proactive approach to spring home maintenance helps prevent costly repairs, improves energy efficiency, and ensures your home stays comfortable through the summer months. This seasonal home checklist will guide you through essential warm weather home prep tasks every homeowner should consider.
Key Takeaways:
- By taking time now to prepare your house for warmer weather, you can protect your home and enjoy a comfortable, worry-free spring and summer.
- Spring is the ideal time to inspect and repair the house exterior to identify and address issues before they worsen.
- Servicing the HVAC equipment ensures it will operate efficiently, saving you money.
- Checking outdoor faucets is the best way to repair winter damage to pipes and find leaks before they cause trouble.
- Refreshing your outdoor living spaces improves comfort and usability throughout the warmer months.
With the first signs of spring temperatures, it is time to prepare your house for warmer weather so you can enjoy the season, whether inside a comfortably cool room or outside entertaining on the deck. Use these expert tips as a seasonal home checklist for spring home maintenance and keep your house exterior, HVAC equipment, outdoor faucets and hoses, and outdoor living spaces in the best shape possible. A little prep now goes a long way towards getting the most out of your house in the months ahead.
Inspect and repair the house exterior
Winter weather can cause hidden damage to your home’s exterior. Spring is the ideal time to identify and address issues, whether it is winter damage to the roof, clogged downspouts, or rotting house trim.
Check the roof
Look for visible damage to shingles, water stains in the attic or ceiling, or areas where water is pooling. If there was heavy snow during the winter, your roof may have signs of damage from ice dams. “I start by going in the attic and seeing if there are signs of leaks,” says Tom Silva, TOH General Contractor. “I also go up on the roof for a closer look.” Fixing minor issues as soon as possible will save money in the long run.
Clean gutters and downspouts
Gutters often fill with leaves and debris over the winter. Clean them thoroughly and ensure downspouts direct water away from your foundation. Proper drainage protects your home’s structure and prevents basement moisture problems.
Inspect house trim for rot
Look closely at door and window exterior trim. If the tip of a flathead screwdriver sinks in easily, and the wood can’t be replaced, prep it for repair by removing all the decay and applying a borate solution to kill fungi lurking in the wood. Then, prime and fill the voids with flexible epoxies. For extra protection, insert borate rods into holes drilled about an inch from the finished repair, as shown [photo from original story]; cover the holes with an epoxy filler.
Service your HVAC equipment
One of the most important steps in warm weather home prep is ensuring your air conditioning system is ready to operate efficiently.
Schedule HVAC maintenance
A professional inspection of your whole-house cooling system—the air handlers inside and the condenser units outside—can clean internal components, check refrigerant levels, and ensure efficient operation. This improves performance, extends equipment lifespan, and reduces energy costs.
Clean and protect the condenser
Homeowners can also do some upkeep themselves. Change the filters on the air handlers inside regularly and pay attention to the condenser outside. When air can’t flow freely through an AC system’s outside condenser, it’s costing you more to cool the house, and making the unit work harder and wear out faster. To keep the unit operating efficiently:
- Turn off the power and unscrew and remove the side panels. Clear away leaves or plants around the unit. Then, working from the top-down, gently rinse off the debris clinging to the coils using a garden hose.Straighten any crushed or dented fins with a fin comb.
- Reattach the panels and restore the power. Your unit is now ready to handle the summer heat.
Mini-split maintenance
Many homes use mini-splits mounted high on a room’s wall for air conditioning (versus whole-house cooling systems). With a little maintenance, you can keep your mini-split in top shape. “Our first line of defense is to protect the air flow through the unit,” says Richard Trethewey, TOH Plumbing and Heating Expert, who suggests regular cleaning of the filters, which are easily accessed by lifting the unit’s front cover and removing the filters. “The simplest way is to take them outside and give them a spray with a hose.” Let dry thoroughly before reinstalling. [insert screenshot from ATOH Season 23/Episode 19]
Check outdoor faucets and hoses
Spring is an ideal time to inspect garden hoses and plumbing such as outdoor faucets for leaks or winter damage.
Test outdoor faucets and irrigation systems
Freeze damage can crack pipes. Turn on outdoor water slowly and check for leaks, drips, or reduced water pressure. Repairing small leaks early helps conserve water and prevent larger problems.
Leak-check garden hoses
Jenn Nawada, TOH Landscape Contractor, offers time-tested advice for getting the garden hoses ready for action: “When you first hook up a hose in spring, attach a closed nozzle to its free end, and turn on the water. If you see leaking at couplings, replace the washers inside the female ends. If there are leaks in the hose itself, cut it at those spots and install metal hose-repair fittings.”
Refresh outdoor living spaces
Whether it’s a patio or deck, getting your outdoor spaces ready now are key to enjoying spring and summer in the fresh air.
Inspect exterior lighting
Check that outdoor lights work correctly and replace bulbs as needed.
Clean decks, patios, and walkways
Remove dirt, mold, and debris and inspect for loose boards, cracks, or trip hazards.Tom Silva, TOH General Contractor, offers this no-pressure deck cleanup tip: “Skip the pressure-washer when it’s time to clean a wood deck; it can really damage the wood fibers. Instead, use a pump sprayer to apply a bleach-free deck cleaner, scrub the wet boards with a long-handle brush, then wash off the grime with a garden hose.”
Prepare lawn and landscaping
Healthy landscaping protects your home and improves curb appeal. Basic spring yard care includes removing debris and dead plants and pruning shrubs and trees. In anticipation of lawn moving, now is the time to sharpen the mower blade. Mowing with a sharp blade improves your lawn’s health and looks.
To sharpen it yourself, pull the mower’s battery or spark plug, remove the blade, and clamp it in a bench vise. Hold a mill bastard file flat against the beveled edge, as shown [insert photo from original story], then push the file across the edge. When all edges feel butter-knife sharp, remove the burrs with a file held flat against the underside of the blade. Remount the blade, and bid ragged, brown grass tips good-bye. If sharpening it yourself feels complicated, many hardware stores offer this service.
Conclusion
By taking time now to prepare your house for warmer weather, you will be ready to enjoy a comfortable, worry-free spring and summer. Better yet, you can make spring home maintenance an annual activity by returning to this seasonal home checklist for warm weather home prep in years to come. End result? You will help prevent costly repairs, improve energy efficiency, extend the life of home systems, and maintain comfort and safety.
