How to look after your listed home this winter

It’s time to start thinking about maintenance for your listed home and festive insurance. Not the most spellbinding of subjects, but we know your home is deeply important to you. And who doesn’t care about their safety?

Winter maintenance:

Period properties need a little more care and attention than new builds. Here are a few things you may need to look out for over winter…

Outside

• Widening cracks caused by ice
• Trees, damaged by storms, falling onto your property
• Pools of water at wall junctions/metal flashings can freeze, causing cracks

Inside

• Unwiped condensation on walls and windows can rot window frames
• Cupboards can get mouldy and damp – use a moisture trap
• Pipes are prone to leak after cold snaps

Tip: A good way to avoid damp is to ventilate your home – this balances humidity.

Winter is known for being cold, so you’ll want to fire up the central heating or stoke the wood-burner. Before winter properly sets in, it’s wise to have your central heating boiler serviced. You can also test your central heating by following the steps below.

How to test your central heating:

• Turn all the radiator valves on
• Turn up the room thermostat to maximum
• Set the heating to run on your programmer/boiler
• After 15 minutes, touch the radiators – are they heating up?

If all the radiators are hot to the touch, there’s nothing to fret about. If any are cold, there’s probably some air trapped in the system. The way to sort this is to bleed the affected radiators.

You can identify a leak by:

• Listening out for hissing or whooshing noises
• Checking the pressure gauge
• Slip foil under radiators and boiler to check for drips

Safeguard your wood-burner:

One of the best cures for shivering is fire. Rather than pitching some sticks in the middle of the living room, we humans have cleverly engineered the wood-burner. It’s tempting with the first hint of winter to pack your burner with any old wood, fling open the grates, and whip up a raging inferno.

To avoid a chimney fire:

• Make sure your chimney flue is swept – tarry deposits burn beautifully
• Burn only seasoned wood, with 20% moisture (you can buy moisture meters) – green wood has sap that collects in the flue – nice flammable sap
• Get rid of a spark arrestor if you have one, and consider a bird guard instead – arrestors clog easily and cause a build-up of flue gases
• When the big day arrives, don’t burn wrapping paper! It burns very hot, very fast and floaty bits can ignite a chimney fire (and no one likes toxic fumes…

Festive insurance:

A less ambiguous term is contents insurance. Christmas isn’t – or shouldn’t – be a materialistic event, but a gift here or there is part of the deal. If you have a few lying around this Christmas, it’ll be worth checking out your sums insured.

What to do if you’re going away for Christmas:

There are few scenarios as appealing to thieves as dark nights and empty properties packed with presents. To keep your home burglar free:

1. Don’t post about it on social media
2. Ask neighbours to put your bins back
3. See if neighbours can park on your drive
4. Have some lights set to a timer
5. Meticulously check you’ve locked everything, including outhouses
6. Letters piling on the mat scream ‘we’re not here!’ – use the Royal Mail’s ‘Keepsafe’ service, which stores your mail for up to 66 days

Finally…enjoy yourself!

All that’s left for you to do now is keep warm, overindulge come Christmas and remove a few spiders from the house (or not – some people like them).