Safer Ways to Maintain Your Home

Safer Ways to Maintain Your Home

When you own your home, you’re responsible for maintaining it. You might be prepared to cover the costs, but you also need to be able to make sure the work gets done. For some people, that means simply finding the right person to do the work every time. Others might prefer to try and DIY their way out of a problem as much as possible. Whichever route you choose, the work needs to be done safely. Not only does it need to be safe for your own sake, but if you ever plan on selling, it will need to be safe for the next owner too. Before you do anything around your home, be sure you’re adopting safer ways to maintain your home.

Always Use Safe Contractors

Finding the right person or people to work in your home is tough. You need someone reliable, who actually turns up when you need them to and provides good value for money. You also need someone who will do their work to a high standard and make sure it’s all safe. When you’re looking for contractors and tradespeople, remember to check for any certifications or qualifications that they should have. For example, anyone working with gas appliances needs to be Gas Safe registered.

Safer Ways to Maintain Your Home: Avoid Getting on the Roof

If there’s anything that you want to avoid when maintaining your home, apart from fiddling with the electrics when you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s getting up high. You might have a ladder for some tasks, but getting up on the roof isn’t a great idea without the appropriate safety equipment. Using a professional service is the best way to get a good look at your roof. In fact, with a roof drone survey, not even the professionals need to get up there. They can survey your roof from above, avoiding creating any damage themselves, and detect any problems that way.

Use Protective Gear for DIY

When you do decide to do some DIY around the house, it’s not all about making sure the final product is safe. You also need to keep yourself safe when you’re getting the job done. That means wearing protective gear when it’s appropriate, which might include eye protection, gloves, or ear protection. These things will usually be necessary if you’re using power tools or perhaps anything that could fly into your eyes or face. It goes without saying that you should be careful when using any tools.

Safer Ways to Maintain Your Home: Know Your Limits

It’s always important to know what you can and can’t do around your home. You might be capable of filling in a hole in the wall or repainting a room, but can you rewire a lighting fixture or plumb in a new bath? There are likely to be things that you’re not capable of doing safely, and you probably won’t do a very good job even if you can do it without hurting yourself or anyone else in the process.

Maintain your home, but keep yourself and your family safe too. It’s important to know when you need help.

Plumbing Emergency at Home: Stay Calm!

Plumbing Emergency at Home: Stay Calm!

If you have never dealt with a plumbing emergency at home, you’re in luck! You’re also one of the very few who have never had to so far, which means it’s time to learn what to do in a plumbing emergency so that you can be ready if it ever happens. At some point or another, every household will deal with a plumbing emergency – whether that’s a puddle on the floor or damp in the walls. You won’t know when they’re coming, but if you are well-prepared for one, you’re going to be just fine.

Before you rush out and panic buy pipes and start Googling where the “PN16 Flanges Stainless Steel” go, you need to take a breath and be ready. You don’t need to qualify as a plumber to learn what to do. So, with that in mind, let’s check out five calm, cool ways to handle a plumbing emergency in your home. 

  1. The very first thing to do is to shut off the water supply. You should turn off the source of the leak as soon as possible, whether it’s the toilet valve or the valve under the sink. The water shutoff valve that provides a flow of water to your home could be shut off, too. Turn it clockwise, and that should do the job.
  2. Next, you want to check the water heater and shut that off, too. You want to make sure that there will be no damage to the heater itself. This will stop the heat from welling up and bursting.
  3. Once you’ve done both of those, find the small leaks in the home. You can turn on the taps one by one once you’ve turned off the main water valve. Any other water will move away from the pipes, and you’ll be able to work out where the leak is coming from. Please make a note so that you can let the plumber know when you call them out.
  4. Even when you turn off the water valve, your pipes will still be holding water. Turn off the valve and turn on the faucets once more to drain the pipes. Try to unblock sinks and toilets while you are waiting for a plumber – this could help the emergency, and they’ll be able to bring the right equipment to help you out.
  5. Lastly, don’t forget actually to call the plumber! You may not have the right tools for the job, but they sure will. It’s easy to forget to ring them amid a panic, but they’ll let you know whether you have done the right thing so far, and they’ll be able to guide you through what to do next.

 

A plumbing emergency doesn’t have to end in devastation for your home. All you need is to stay calm and let the experts help. Oh, and turn off the water. There’s no need for further damage if there doesn’t have to be.