Maintaining your property and cheap landlord house insurance

Although better weather might now, ever so tentatively, be on the horizon, the reality of life is that we can’t be entirely sure that we have finally said goodbye yet to the worst of the bad weather.

Hopefully your house or flat managed to survive some of the worst winter excesses but even the arrival of spring brings with it the need to get out and get some jobs done.

External paintwork

Winter can be seriously damaging to just about any form of external paintwork, particularly that which might be around metal gutters and drainpipes etc.

Get this done as soon as possible, at least once any risks of late frosts are finally passed and you can be sure that your new paint will dry in an orderly fashion.

If you don’t, you may see rust starting on the metal components and the sun drying out any exposed wooden surfaces.

Gutters

These are, of course, a classic problem associated with the end of autumn and fallen leaves but winter can also add an accumulation of various forms of tree debris, old birds’ nests and perhaps holes caused by ice and frost damage.

Don’t wait until the heavy spring rains start to highlight these problems for you through floods and ingress of water but instead give your gutters a quick check and if necessary clean / patch-up as soon as you get a half-decent day in early spring time.

Drains and fat traps

Winter is a time for comfort food and that typically means perhaps rather fattier cooking and frying than is entirely good for us!

Leaving to one side the effects on our bodies, it’s possible that more fat has gone down your sink and various drains than normal and that might cause blockages in pipes unless you have appropriate fat traps in place. Of course, drains and such traps must be regularly cleaned out if blockages are not to result.

Check your bricks, stonework and roof

Heavy frost, ice and snow are notoriously damaging to brickwork or stone walls etc.

Mortar might have been removed and that could leave structures unstable unless you identify the problem and deal with it quickly.

Roofs are equally vulnerable to things such as high winds and torrential rain.  Make sure that all of your slates and tiles are where they should be and that flashings that should be around chimney stacks are still there rather than a mile away in a field where a storm has deposited them!

In passing, when selecting what may appear to be cheap landlord house insurance, it might pay to be clear just which sorts of circumstances might be covered should they result in problems and which might not be. Certainly, issues relating to lack of maintenance or wear and tear, typically will not be.

Perhaps in some countries, the end of winter is the time when you can stop worrying about whether or not your property is entirely weatherproof.  In the UK, of course, it means no such thing!