What the house needs this month
84 jobs across the year, sorted into the month each one belongs in.
September, northern hemisphere. 0 of 20 ticked.
September is the hinge of the year for a house and the most valuable month on this list. Everything you do now is preparation, and everything you leave costs more later. Run the heating for a full hour while an engineer can still come out quickly, bleed the radiators before the cold rather than during the first cold week, and look at the loft insulation to see that it is not squashed and still reaches the eaves. Check that the outside lights work before the evenings get dark and clean their lenses while you are there, and replace the bulbs that have gone. Wash the greenhouse glass down before the low light, push on the fence posts before the wind, and check the shed roof before the wet.
Safety
- Test every smoke alarmPress the button on each one until it sounds. It takes two minutes and it is the single most useful thing on this list.
- Test the carbon monoxide alarmBefore the heating season and again in the middle of it. A carbon monoxide alarm has a sealed life of about seven years, printed on the back.
- Press the test button on the earth leakage unitEvery six months. It should trip immediately. If it does not, that is an electrician rather than a job for the weekend.
- Have the chimney swept before the first fireBook it before everyone else does, which means late summer. A sweep will also tell you whether the cowl and the flashing are sound.
- Check the heater flexes and plugsBefore the heaters come out of the cupboard. Look for cracked flex, scorched pins and anything that has been run under a rug.
Water and heating
- Bleed the radiatorsCold at the top and warm at the bottom means air. Bleed them before the heating season rather than in the first cold week.
- Book the boiler or heat pump serviceBook it in late summer. Everybody rings on the first cold morning and that is the week you cannot get anyone.
- Run the heating for an hour before you need itOne hour in the last warm month tells you what is wrong while an engineer can still come out quickly.
Inside
- Clean the windows inside and outTwice a year is enough, and one of those should be just before the dark months, when every bit of light through the glass counts.
- Vacuum the dust off the back of the fridgeTwice a year. Dust on the coils makes the compressor work harder and run longer for the same cold.
- Run a hot empty cycle in the washing machineQuarterly, at the hottest setting with a machine cleaner or a cup of soda crystals. It is what stops the door seal smelling.
- Look at the loft insulation before the coldCheck it is not squashed, that it reaches the eaves without blocking the ventilation, and that nothing has been storing itself in it.
- Replace the bulbs that have goneBefore the dark months rather than during them, and check the outside ones at the same time.
Outside
- Push on the fence postsBefore the windy months. A post that rocks will be flat by the spring, and it is a much easier job standing up than lying down.
- Check the shed roof and doorBefore the wet months. Roofing felt fails at the edges first, and a shed that leaks in June has been leaking since March.
- Check the outside lights workBefore the evenings get dark. Clean the lens while you are there, because most outside lights lose more to dirt than to the bulb.
- Look at the window frames and sillsPress a screwdriver gently into the bottom corners. Soft wood there is where rot starts and it is much cheaper caught early.
The garden edge
- Turn the compost heapThree or four times a year. Air is what turns a heap into compost rather than into a wet layer of grass clippings.
- Check the water butt and its diverterBefore the rains. Clean out the leaves, check the tap, and make sure the diverter is set to fill rather than to bypass.
- Wash the greenhouse glass downBefore the low light months. Dirty glass in midwinter is the difference between a plant that holds and a plant that stretches.
September, the northern hemisphere
Northern Hemisphere
September is the hinge of the year for a house and the most valuable month on this list. Everything you do now is preparation, and everything you leave costs more later. Run the heating for a full hour while an engineer can still come out quickly, bleed the radiators before the cold rather than during the first cold week, and look at the loft insulation to see that it is not squashed and still reaches the eaves. Check that the outside lights work before the evenings get dark and clean their lenses while you are there, and replace the bulbs that have gone. Wash the greenhouse glass down before the low light, push on the fence posts before the wind, and check the shed roof before the wet.
September, the southern hemisphere
Southern Hemisphere
September is spring and the month the outside work opens up. The rains are coming in the summer rainfall regions, so the priority is water: clear the gutters and the downpipes, check the water butt and the diverter, lift the drain covers and look for standing water in the gullies. Look the roof over from the ground and deal with anything the winter lifted. Clear the moss off the paths before the wet, check the pointing and the render after the cold, and wash the patio down giving it a couple of days to dry before deciding what needs repointing. Do the spring safety round: earth leakage test, carbon monoxide alarm, fridge coils, a hot empty cycle in the washing machine, and a proper look at the ladder before the year's work.
What this is
A house asks for about the same things every year, and almost nobody remembers all of them at the right moment. The list is not difficult and it is not long. It is just that the month a boiler service is worth booking is not the month anybody thinks about boilers, and the month to lag an outside tap is the month before the one where it bursts. This page holds eighty four jobs, each attached to the months it belongs in, and shows you the ones that are due now.
Tick them off as you do them. The ticks are kept on this device in the same way your plant list is, under a key called hh.home.v1, and they are cleared at the start of each year, because a maintenance list that still shows last February ticked is worse than no list at all. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is nothing to sign up for.
Why the two hemispheres are different lists
Most of what a house needs is driven by the weather rather than by the date, so the same job lands in opposite months on either side of the equator. Bleeding the radiators before the cold is September in the north and April in the south. Draining the outside tap is November in one and May in the other. The compass rose at the top switches between them and remembers your choice, which is the same setting the plant log and the almanac use.
Not everything flips, though, and that is the part a simple six month shift would get wrong. Testing the smoke alarms is a monthly job in both hemispheres and appears in all twelve months. Descaling the kettle, turning the compost and pressing the test button on the earth leakage unit are on the same months everywhere, because nothing about them depends on the season. Cutting dry growth back from the walls before the fire season is the one that looks like a flip and is not: in most of the north the dry season is summer, and across the summer rainfall south it is winter, so the job sits in June and July on both lists for entirely different reasons.
How the list is sorted
Into five groups, in the order they matter when something goes wrong. Safety first, which is the alarms, the extinguisher, the electrics, the chimney and the ladder. Then water and heating, which is the boiler, the pipes, the gutters and the taps, and which between them cause most of the expensive damage a house suffers. Then inside, then outside, then the garden edge, which is the tools, the mower, the compost and the pond: the jobs that belong to the house rather than to any plant, and which are easy to lose between the two.
None of this is a substitute for a qualified person on the things that need one. A gas appliance, a consumer unit, a chimney and anything on a roof are all jobs where the useful entry on the list is the one that says book somebody, and the value of booking in August is that you can still get a date.
What to plant this month is the other half of this, over in the almanac.