Spring Cleaning and your Home Insurance

By Clea Spahn


Spring cleaning is a tradition that allows us to freshen up our homes and get a head start on the hectic seasons of spring and summer. It is also a time to conduct maintenance on your home. Even though these chores need doing only once or twice in a year, you could be saving a lot of money by taking care of the smaller tasks before they become big problems.

Here are a few tips that will make your spring cleaning easier. And remember, big home insurance claims could be prevented by following these tips.

Cleaning gutters is an easy job to put off, but the longer you wait the worse it can get. Thoroughly cleaning your gutters each cleaning season will help to keep them working correctly. Debris can build up and cause damage to your downspouts and cause water damage to your roof. Clear away any leaves and other debris that has made its way into them, and check for leaky or loose spots. Floods and water damage in basements and crawlspaces are often caused by gutters that aren't draining correctly.

While you're up there with the gutters, take a look at your roof. Keep an eye out for things like damaged flashing, missing shingles, blistering, buckling, rotting, or growth of algae. Taking a look at your roof during spring cleaning activities will allow you to address any small issues and prevent them from becoming larger. If you need to get a new roof, you can schedule and plan for it before it becomes far more expensive to fix.

Trim your bushes, shrubs, and trees. This helps prevent mildew on your home, and it also can extend the life of your siding. Check your shrubs for dead branches, and prune out any winter damage and broken branches using clean cuts. Dead branches can cause roofing damage and damage to nearby windows.

Power washing the exterior of your house is another great tool for preventative maintenance. A regularly scheduled maintenance plan can extend life to building siding, sidewalks, patios or wooden areas like your deck and fence. Regular power washing can help to eliminate contaminates that contribute to the degradation of a structure through rot, decay, and premature age.

Regularly check the batteries in your smoke alarm. Replacing batteries in all smoke alarms should be done at least once a year. In addition, smoke alarms should be tested once a month and if an alarm chirps, warning the battery is low, replace the battery right away.

Another key way to prevent a fire in your home is to keep your chimney clean. Some people like to do this in the spring, and chimney sweeps may offer promotions at this time of year, so remember to keep a look out for specials in your area.

Are there any other things I should do? Of course. But this is a good start to ensuring that your home is ready for the new season and that a little preventative action can go a long way to reducing any issues that could impact you or require your home insurance to respond.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment