Fall Home Maintenance: Do It Now Before Ohio Decides It’s Winter Tomorrow

Fall in Central Ohio is pretty great. The leaves change, the humidity finally disappears, football is back, and you can open the windows without feeling like you’ve invited the Amazon rainforest into your living room.

And for approximately three glorious weeks, the temperature is perfect.

Then one morning you wake up and it’s 34 degrees. Welcome to Ohio.

Unfortunately, while we’re enjoying that brief period between “Why is it still 87 degrees?” and “Where did I put the snow shovel?”, our houses could use a little attention too. Fall is actually one of the best times of year to walk around your house and take care of some relatively simple maintenance. Most of these things aren’t difficult or terribly expensive, but ignoring them has an amazing ability to turn a $20 problem in October into a $2,000 problem in February.

So grab a cup of coffee, take a lap around the house, and let’s see what needs attention.

Start With the Gutters

Let’s begin with everyone’s favorite home-maintenance project: gutters.

I know. Nobody has ever invited friends over on a Saturday night to admire their freshly cleaned gutters. But gutters are actually one of the more important—and frequently ignored—parts of your home’s water-management system.

Think about what they’re doing. Your roof collects an enormous amount of water every time it rains. The gutters catch that water, move it to the downspouts, and the downspouts carry it safely away from the house.

At least that’s what’s supposed to happen.

Once leaves, sticks, maple helicopters and other debris begin filling the gutters, water can’t flow properly. It starts spilling over the front or back of the gutter, often dumping directly beside the foundation. That can contribute to foundation and basement water problems, damage fascia and exterior trim, stain siding and masonry, and wash out landscaping.

Then winter shows up and makes everything more interesting.

Water trapped in clogged gutters can freeze. Snow melting on the roof can reach the cold eaves and gutters and freeze again. Suddenly you have a gutter full of leaves, frozen water and ice hanging from the edge of your house. That’s a lot of weight for something attached to your fascia with relatively small fasteners.

So clean the gutters after the leaves come down, make sure they’re securely attached and properly pitched, and check that the downspouts are actually carrying water away from the house. If your downspouts connect to underground conductors, make sure those are flowing too.

Water needs somewhere to go.

Preferably somewhere that isn’t your basement.

While You’re Looking Up… Look at the Roof

You don’t necessarily need to climb onto your roof to give it a basic inspection. In fact, for many homeowners, I’d strongly prefer that you didn’t. Stand back where you can see it safely and take a good look.

Start with the obvious things: missing or damaged shingles, tree branches touching the roof, and piles of leaves or other debris.

Branches rubbing against shingles can gradually wear away their protective surface. Dead or damaged limbs can also come down during a winter storm, and a branch that seems relatively harmless when it’s bare can become considerably heavier when it’s covered with snow or ice.

Trees are wonderful.

Trees falling through the house are considerably less wonderful.

Also look at your roof valleys. A valley is the V-shaped area where two sections of roof meet. Valleys are important because they concentrate water from two roof surfaces into one drainage path. If leaves and debris collect there, they can slow or redirect water, hold moisture against the shingles and potentially contribute to leaks.

Then there’s flashing, another one of those building terms contractors throw around assuming everyone knows what it means.

Flashing is the thin metal or waterproof material installed at vulnerable areas of the roof—around chimneys, where roofs meet walls, around some vents and skylights, and in other transitions—to direct water away from joints where it might otherwise get into the house.

If flashing becomes loose, bent, rusted, separated or improperly sealed, water can find its way underneath the roofing and eventually into the structure. And water has an amazing ability to travel. The stain that appears on your bedroom ceiling isn’t necessarily directly below the place where the water entered.

That’s why a small flashing problem can become a surprisingly large repair if it’s ignored.

Again, you don’t have to become a roofer. Just look. If something appears damaged, loose or unusual, have someone qualified take a closer look.

Your roof has one primary job:

Keep outside outside.

It’s worth helping it succeed.

Water Is Still the Enemy

If you read my previous blog about water intrusion, you already know my philosophy: Water always wins.

Fall is a great time to look at the grading and hard surfaces around your house. Ideally, soil, patios, sidewalks, porches and other surfaces immediately adjacent to the house should direct water away from the foundation, not toward it.

Concrete settles over time. Soil settles. Patios move. A patio that originally had a nice gentle pitch away from the house 30 years ago may now be doing exactly the opposite.

Why does that matter?

Because you’ve essentially created a giant rainwater collector and pointed it at your foundation.

Water repeatedly collecting against the house can find its way through cracks, joints, foundation walls, door openings and other vulnerable areas. Even if you’ve never had water in the basement before, continually saturating the soil beside the foundation is something you want to avoid.

Look for puddles along the house after rain. Look for patios or sidewalks that visibly slope toward the foundation. Look for areas where mulch washes back toward the house. Sometimes settled concrete can be lifted or leveled without completely replacing it, and minor grading problems can often be corrected before they become major water problems.

While you’re walking around, look at the caulking too.

Exterior caulk seals the joints where different materials meet and where water could otherwise find a path into the building—around windows and doors, between trim and siding, around penetrations, and in other vulnerable joints.

Caulk doesn’t last forever. It dries out, shrinks, cracks and eventually pulls away.

A quarter-inch gap doesn’t look particularly dramatic when you’re standing there looking at it on a sunny October afternoon. But rain doesn’t need a giant opening to cause trouble. Water gets behind trim or siding, stays wet, and over time can contribute to wood rot, damaged sheathing, staining, mold and other problems you definitely don’t want to discover during a remodeling project five years from now.

Small maintenance now. Potentially much bigger repair later.

There’s a theme developing here.

Get the House Ready for Cold Weather

Your furnace is about to go from sitting around doing practically nothing to working every day for the next several months, so give it a little attention before that happens. Inspect or change the filter, and if the system hasn’t been serviced in a while, consider having an HVAC professional look it over.

And remember our previous discussion about MERV ratings: the most expensive, highest-rated filter on the shelf isn’t automatically the best filter for your furnace. Your furnace needs to breathe too.

But here’s the advice I particularly want you to remember:

Turn your furnace on BEFORE you actually need it.

I’m not giving you this advice solely from 25 years of working on houses. I’m giving it to you because I didn’t do it at my own house last winter.

And I really, really regretted it.

We waited until we actually needed the heat to discover that our furnace had apparently decided it had other plans.

There are few things quite as irritating as standing in your own cold house thinking, “You know what would have been smart? Turning this thing on two weeks ago when it was 60 degrees outside.”

Learn from my mistake.

Pick a mild fall day, set the thermostat several degrees above the room temperature, and let the furnace run through a normal heating cycle. Make sure it starts properly, warm air comes from the registers, and the house actually begins getting warmer. Listen for unusual noises and pay attention to anything that doesn’t seem normal.

The first time you turn the furnace on each fall, you may notice a temporary dusty or slightly burning smell as accumulated dust heats up. That should disappear fairly quickly. A strong electrical smell, persistent burning odor, smoke, unusual noises, or a carbon monoxide alarm are not things to ignore. Shut the system down and have it checked by a qualified HVAC professional.

HVAC companies get remarkably popular the first night temperatures suddenly drop.

Trust me on this one.

Test it now.

Fall is also the time to disconnect your garden hoses. This takes approximately 30 seconds and can prevent a major headache. Even frost-free hose bibs need the hose removed so water can properly drain. Leave the hose connected and water can remain trapped inside, freeze, expand and potentially damage the faucet or plumbing inside the wall.

You may not discover the problem until spring, when you turn on the faucet and unknowingly begin watering the inside of your house.

Generally considered poor landscaping technique.

Check the Things Designed to Keep You Alive

While we’re getting the house ready for heating season, test your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms.

Push the test button. Make sure they actually work. Check the manufacture dates and replace alarms that have reached the end of their service life. If your alarms use replaceable batteries, fall is also a great time to put fresh batteries in them.

There are two reasons to do this.

The first is obvious: working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms can save your life.

The second is considerably less dramatic but still important:

You don’t want to hear…

CHIRP.

…at 2:00 in the morning.

If you read my smoke-alarm blog, you already know that there is actually a scientific reason low-battery chirps frequently happen in the middle of the night. As the temperature in the house drops overnight, a weak battery’s voltage can dip just enough to trigger the low-battery warning.

So yes, the smoke alarm that wakes you from a dead sleep at 2:00 a.m. isn’t necessarily doing it because it hates you.

It just feels that way.

Fresh batteries are considerably easier to install at 2:00 in the afternoon.

Don’t Forget the Equipment Outside

Your air conditioner survived another Ohio summer, so give it a little dignity before winter. Clear leaves, sticks and vegetation from around the outdoor unit so debris doesn’t accumulate inside it.

You generally don’t need to wrap the entire thing tightly in plastic. Doing that can trap moisture and may create a lovely winter condominium for mice. Follow your equipment manufacturer’s recommendations, but the important thing is keeping debris from piling up around and inside the unit.

If you have a fireplace, now is also a good time to make sure it’s ready. Wood-burning fireplaces and chimneys may need inspection and cleaning, particularly if they’re used regularly. Gas fireplaces deserve attention too.

It’s much nicer to discover a problem in October than on the first freezing night when you’ve already poured a drink, turned on the football game and decided you’re not leaving the couch.

Do the Five-Minute Walkaround

If you do nothing else after reading this, do this one thing: walk around your house and actually look at it.

We live in our homes every day, which ironically makes us pretty bad at noticing gradual changes. Look at the gutters, roof, siding, trim, caulking, concrete and grading. Open the utility-room door and look at the furnace and water heater. Check under sinks. Walk through the basement.

You’re not trying to perform a professional home inspection. You’re simply looking for something that seems different: a water stain that wasn’t there before, a piece of trim beginning to rot, a crack that’s gotten larger, a gutter pulling away, a puddle where there shouldn’t be one, or a suspicious new noise.

Your house talks to you. Unfortunately, it usually communicates through cracks, stains, puddles and expensive noises.

The trick is noticing the whisper before it starts yelling.

And while we’re preparing everything else for winter, find the snow shovel, ice melt and whatever other snow-removal equipment you own. If you have a snowblower, make sure it actually starts before there’s six inches of snow on the driveway. Every year someone waits until the first major snowfall to discover theirs hasn’t started since 2022, then spends 45 minutes in the garage pulling the starter cord and whispering words that cannot be printed on the Rick Kelley Builders website.

Don’t be that person.

Then Go Enjoy Fall

I realize I just gave you a list of chores during what may be the nicest three weeks of weather we’ll have all year. Sorry.

But that’s really the point of fall maintenance. Spend a little time now checking the boring stuff while the weather is nice, and hopefully you won’t be dealing with the expensive stuff when it’s 14 degrees outside.

Clean the gutters. Look at the roof. Check the grading and caulking. Disconnect the hoses. Turn on the furnace. Test the alarms and change the batteries. Walk around the house and see what catches your eye.

Most of it can be done in an afternoon.

Then you’re finished. Go watch some football, have a cider, sit by the fire, or do whatever it is you actually wanted to do with your Saturday.

And if you happen to see someone walking through Upper Arlington holding a golf umbrella over a perfectly waterproof Corgi because the grass is slightly damp…

That’s probably me.

Apparently Gracie has fall maintenance requirements too.