Fall home maintenance checklist

Before the first fire

• Have the chimney and fireplace inspected. Creosote buildup in the flue is what causes chimney fires, and it isn't something you can assess from the hearth. Inspection and sweeping are a certified sweep's work, ideally before the season's first fire rather than after a smoky one.
• Test the carbon monoxide alarms specifically. Anything that burns fuel is about to start running again, and CO is the reason those alarms exist.
• Look at the damper and the cap. A damper that won't close is a hole in the house all winter. A missing cap lets rain and animals into the flue.

Before the first hard freeze

Winterizing the faucets and the sprinklers are the only two tasks in the app pinned to a calendar date rather than an interval, and this is why. Rolling intervals work for routine upkeep, because the clock that matters is how long since you last did the job. Freeze protection runs on the forecast instead.

• Winterize the outdoor faucets. Water left in a spigot can freeze and burst the pipe behind the wall, where you won't find it until spring. Disconnect every hose first. A connected hose is what traps the water.
• Winterize the sprinklers. Water in the lines can split pipes and heads. Blow outs use compressed air, which is why most owners have an irrigation service do it, and why the service's calendar fills up in October.
• Check anywhere else water sits outdoors. Rain barrels, pond pumps, an outdoor kitchen, a hose reel with a coil still full.
• Put foam covers on the outdoor spigots once they're drained. They cost a couple of dollars each and buy a few degrees of margin on the night the forecast is wrong. They are not a substitute for draining the line, though; an insulated cover over a full pipe just freezes more slowly.

Heat and hot water

• Book the annual heating service. Same logic as spring: off season means shorter waits, and the first cold night isn't the moment to discover a problem.
• Change the filter and keep changing it. Heating season loads filters as hard as cooling season does.
• Flush the water heater, or have it flushed. Sediment steals hot water and shortens the tank's life, and hot water matters more in the months ahead.
• Run the heat for an hour before you need it. The first cold night is a bad time to discover the system won't start. A burning dust smell that clears in ten minutes is normal on the first run of the season; one that doesn't clear is not.
• Look at the weatherstripping on exterior doors, and at the sweep along the bottom. Hard, flattened or missing strip is the cheapest heating loss in the house to fix.
• Find the shutoffs while it's still comfortable outside. Water main, fuel, and the breaker panel. Knowing where they are is a five minute job that only ever pays off at a bad moment.

Fire safety before the house closes up

Winter is when a house is sealed, heated and full of running appliances, which is why the fire jobs cluster here.

• Clean the dryer vent. Lint in the duct is a leading cause of dryer fires, and slow drying is the first sign.
• Test the smoke and CO detectors, and note the date on the back of each one. Most alarms are rated for around ten years.
• Look at the fire extinguisher. Gauge in the green, pin and seal intact, no rust or dents.
• Clean the range hood filters. More cooking is about to happen.

Outside, last

Leave the gutters until the leaves are actually down, or you'll be doing them twice.

• Clean the gutters and downspouts once the trees have finished. This is the more important of the two annual cleanings, because the water it handles will sometimes be freezing.
• Clear the roof valleys and any flat sections of accumulated leaves, from the ground where possible.
• Walk the foundation and the grading one last time before the ground hardens.
• Bring in or cover what won't survive the winter. Furniture, cushions, terracotta.

Patina pins the two freeze jobs to their calendar date and rolls everything else forward from when you last did it. In this season that difference is the whole point.

Seasons here are northern hemisphere, as they are throughout the app.