Top Tips for Winter-Proofing your Property

Heating

The boiler is obviously extremely important during the winter months, and it goes without saying that ensuring the boiler is working properly is a major first step to winter-proofing the property. We always advise our landlords to perform a boiler service around September, and to speak to the tenants to make sure that the boiler is coming on regularly throughout the day and night. It’s also a good idea to bleed the radiators, to make sure the property is being thoroughly heated.

Boiler call-outs are not only very common, but also very stressful for tenants because it means they most probably have no heating or hot water. Small leaks, frozen pipes, unbled radiators and reduced pressure are the most common culprits.

Damp

Water will always find its way through any weakness in a property, and this happens generally in one of four ways.

1) Water from the ground - any landlord with a basement will likely be well-accustomed to pools of water under the ground floor. But even without a cellar, you might find rising damp in the lower corner of any ground floor. The steadfast way to fix this is to tank the floor and walls, but this can be quite costly! There are other methods but it is best to leave this to a specialist.

2) Water from the roof - normally via missing or cracked roof tiles, and blocked gutters. Both of these are easily rectified by a roofer. It is good practice to make sure your gutters are cleaned out regularly, and a common sign of a blocked gutter is a build-up of vegetation (weeds).

3) Window seals - The external seals around windows can fail over time and you might find signs of damp around the edges or on the window sill. Again, this is easily remedied by a qualified contractor.

4) Condensation - the fourth, and probably most common cause of damp in a rental property is condensation resulting from the matrimony of warm air and cold surfaces. This normally presents itself alongside mould in the bathrooms, but also very commonly as damp patches under and around bay windows, and/or water on the internal surface of windows. The first layer of advice is to make sure extractor fans are working properly in the bathrooms, and also that windows are being opened regularly to allow the warm, humid air out the property. For condensation under bay windows, you may need to add an extra layer of insulation behind the plaster board, but this can be quite costly! It doesn’t help if tenants dry their clothes on the radiators. Legionnaires Disease is a big problem and you as a landlord have a legal obligation to prevent it emenating from damp rooms in your property.

Insulation

Thinking about insulation is three-fold.

1) Firstly, you want to make sure the house is adequately insulated in terms of its structure. So by making sure that your property has double/triple-glazed windows is a good start, but you could also add to the existing insulation in the loft. A property loses a lot of heat through the windows and roof, so this needs a lot of attention. Your property should also be adequately insulated in regards to the floors and walls, but there might not be much that you can do here without some costly intervention.

2) The second area to look at, like looking at seals around windows for damp, is that we need to make sure the cold air cannot get in and the warm air out. Draughtraught excluders on doors and extra internal seals around windows can really help here, and they do not cost a bomb.

3) Finally, it’s worth looking at insulating your pipes in cold areas. Lagging is extremely cheap online and easy to fit, but by covering your pipes you can hopefully avoid frozen pipes, which can be a nightmare to sort. If you have a hot water tank this can also be insulated with a thermal cover, but it might be a good idea to get advice from a reputable plumber before doing this yourself. So in summary, there are three good ways to think about winter-proofing your property to avoid unnecessary call-out charges. These are: HEATING, DAMP & INSULATION

Again, if you need help with any of the content in this guide then please do reach out to us as we’d be more than happy to help.