home maintenance tips – Pennysaverblog

Household

5 Money-Saving Home Maintenance Tasks For Fall

Fall is a great time to get around to those home maintenance tasks you’ve been meaning to complete. Not only are these tasks essential to keeping your house in top shape, but they can also save you money by preventing serious damage or problems. Here are 5 money-saving home maintenance tasks for fall.

Clean out your gutters. It is important to take time in the fall months to get up on your ladder and remove the gunk and build up that may be sitting in your gutters. Very often things like leaves, debris, dirt and other items will get stuck in the gutters causing seemingly minute problems that can actually lead to some serious and expensive issues with time. When it rains, buildup in can overflow your gutters, causing water to accumulate in areas where it can cause damage to your foundation or other parts of your home. These types of damage can end up being extremely costly, and so keeping your gutters clean and intact is an excellent way to prevent problems and reduce the need to repair leaks or foundation dilemmas.

If you have noticed any issues in relation to your gutters, e.g. water pooling inside your home due to a backlog that’s broken through, then you will have to ensure that this is dealt with right away. Clean the gutters and get someone around to repair the leak. You may notice a moldy smell if it has been left a while. This can indicate mold spores growing, which is why it is essential to speak with professionals who provide mold testing in Stamford, CT, for instance, so you can have this problem dealt with as soon as possible.

January 8, 2014

Household

Do Not Let Your Pool Closing Chemicals Stain Your Pool

The homeowner decides it is time to shut down the pool for the winter – the kids are back in school, leaves are turning, and no one has used the pool for several weeks. It’s time to “winterize” the pool, to prevent problems from developing over the winter. But during the process, the homeowner doesn’t want to accidentally do something by adding chemicals which might stain the pool. So how can a pool owner perform a successful winterizing process without creating stains?

Read the instructions. According to Wisegeek.com, the first suggestion is to read the instructions on pool winterizing kits. The chemical treatment for winter is to introduce a mixture of winter chlorine, alkalizer, and powder to ensure that the pool stays clean over the winter. A number of manufacturers offer winterizing kits, and each has different directions. This is because some of the manufacturers recommend different products to accomplish the winterizing task. The nice thing about shutting down the pool for the cold months is that most pool winter kits are pre-measured – they have chemicals in proportions for just the size of pool in question.

Each of these winterizing kits will introduce extremely high levels of the chemicals into the pool. Some chemicals require that the pool filter be turned on while the chemicals are added. Some don’t require the use of the filter. Make sure to follow the directions for the kit that is being used – failure to do so could result in stains to the liner. If chemicals are incorrectly applied, it could result in a nasty surprise when the owner goes out to the pool in the spring. He could remove the pool cover to find an ugly stain on the pool liner, which would be difficult to remove, and require a lot of work to eliminate. Read the instructions.

October 27, 2013