Fall means cozy indoor fires, pumpkin patch visits and colour-changing leaves.
Unfortunately, it also means that those colourful leaves will soon be covering your lawn and clogging your gutters. Don’t worry! These tips will help you get your home and yard in top shape for the colder months of the year.
Clean your gutters to prevent water damage
Whether you call them eavestroughs or gutters, there’s no denying they’re the unsung heroes of preventing water damage to your house. You’ll know your gutters are overdue for a cleaning when you see water running over the top ledge on rainy days.
You can easily clean out gutters yourself, as long as you’re comfortable with heights and it’s safe for you to do so (if your gutters aren’t easily accessed from a ladder, you should hire a professional). Grab a ladder, a bucket and a garden trowel or other type of scooping tool to clear debris. Wear gloves, and keep your garden hose handy.
Once you’re up the ladder with your supplies, use the trowel to scoop into the bucket the leaves and other materials clogging the eavestrough. After you’ve scooped as much debris as you can from your gutters, run the garden hose through to flush out any remaining material.
Tip: If you use rain barrels in the spring and summer to collect runoff from your eavestroughs, you’ll want to empty any remaining water from the barrels and put them in storage. If water is left in your barrels and they’re not properly stored, the water could freeze and expand, causing the barrels to crack.
Raking is more fun with the whole family
Raking is much more fun if you do it with your family. Kids love jumping into the leaf piles at the end! Of course, this also means you’ll have to do the job twice.
For larger yards or yards with many trees, you can opt to use a leaf blower. If you prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, grab a few rakes, and get to work!
If you have smaller trees that don’t drop too many leaves, you may be able to wait until all the leaves have fallen off your trees before raking. Make sure, however, you don’t leave large mounds of foliage on your lawn for too long as you risk damaging your grass.
Once the leaves have been raked and removed from your lawn, get your mower and cut your grass. When you’ve done your final mow of the season, be sure to take extra care to properly store your lawn mower for winter.
Tip: Like grass clippings and other plant material, fallen leaves can be composted or used as filler materials in garden beds. You can also use dead leaves as mulch for perennial flower beds to provide extra insultation and protection during the winter.
Fall maintenance for wood-burning fireplaces
When the temperature starts to drop, a cozy indoor fire is very inviting. Before you build one in your wood-burning fireplace, make sure you rid your chimney of debris. Clean out your fireplace by first sweeping old ash and charcoal into the garbage, then spraying everything down with a fireplace-friendly cleaner and scrubbing it out. Wear gloves during this process, as it can get messy.
Since carbon can be the primary buildup on fireplace glass, avoid using standard glass cleaners that contain ammonia. These cleaners are not formulated to clean carbon buildup. Instead, look for a cleaner that is specifically for fireplace glass.
