Soon, the heat of summer will be left behind to the cooling winds of fall. Between the hot afternoons and cool evenings, you’ve probably been tackling some summer projects. But soon those cool evenings will turn chilly, and before you know it, fall and winter will be here, stopping your projects. 

Before the seasons change, you should make sure your home is ready and any summer projects are wrapped up. Here are a few you might have missed or forgotten.
 

Ensure Your Home is Airtight
 

A major part of keeping your home cool in the summer and warm in the winter is how well your home does at keeping your temperature inside. For example, during the summer the sun is beating down on your home trying to make it warm, and cool air is trying to escape through cracks and gaps inside your home. 

You can’t do much against the beating sun, but you can fill those gaps and cracks. The first place to look is your windows and doors. Make sure the weather stripping around these places are healthy and not worn out. If the stripping looks cracked, ripped, or missing, you should replace them.

Another point to examine is making sure your doors to the outdoors are settled properly. Some doors, especially with use over time, will lean or shift, allowing gaps at the bottom or top of your door. If you can lay down on the floor and see sunlight through the gap in your door, you need to fix that. This might mean adding different weather stripping, or readjusting the door to sit more level.

It’s best to tackle this in the heat of summer, where you can feel and identify gaps, and then fix, rather than feeling the cold and having to try and fix it in the cold winter.
 

Flush Out Your Water Heater
 

At least annually, if not twice a year, you should be flushing all of the water out of your water heater. It helps remove sediment floating in the water heater, prevents rust, and is good it’s general health. Summer is a great time to do this since you probably already have a hose out and available to hook up to your water heater. 

This maintenance is good for the summer too because it requires dumping a large amount of water out, probably outside. In winter, that water could freeze and make issues later, but in summer, it can just go straight into your gutter and down the drain. 

It’s also not a bad idea to have someone inspect your water heater before winter comes. You can survive summer with cold water, but in winter, nobody wants to be taking cold showers.
 

Finish Your Lawn Projects
 

Do you have big aspirations for your lawn? Are you looking to get it green and lush, or make some changes to the landscaping? Well, you need to try and finish whatever your lawn projects are before the leaves start to fall.

When fall brings its chilling temperatures, your lawn will start preparing for winter and begin transitioning to its dormant state. During this time, you don’t want to mess with it or do large projects outside of putting up Christmas decorations. 

Your goal for finishing your lawn projects should be before the first freeze of the season. Before that happens, you should flush out and turn off your sprinklers and put down fertilizer to put your grass into hibernation. 
 

Schedule Your Inspections
 

If you have any areas of concern going into fall and winter, like an old heating system, a faulty dishwasher, or a falling apart roof, now is when you should get those checked out. That way, you can have quotes for how much it might cost to fix or replace these issues before they leave you cold or struggling in the cold.

Not only is this beneficial for getting ahead of problems, it also informs you of your budget and costs in the coming month, especially with the holidays around the corner. If you need to replace your roof before the snows begin to fall, you might have to cut back on holiday travel and gifts.
 

Budget to Pay for What You Can’t Do Yourself
 

Maybe you have summer projects you need doing, but just don’t have the time to take care of it yourself. Between summer vacations, work, keeping kids entertained, and more, sometimes the lawn gets neglected or you can’t take a few days ensuring your windows and doors are properly weather stripped. 

So, you need to pay for someone else to take on some of the projects. You hire a contractor for the landscaping, a roofer to fix the roof, and have an HVAC professional inspect your AC and heater. Those bills pile up, and might be too much to handle in one go.

Pioneer can help with our Home Equity Line of Credit. This financial tool gives you flexibility to pay for larger expenses now during a set time period, and once that is over, you pay it back month over month. It’s very useful for people going through a home renovation or large project they need to fund. 

Learn more about a Home Equity Line of Credit