What the house needs in April, north of the equator
17 jobs, in five groups.
April is the busiest month for the house as well as the garden, and it is the one where doing things in the right order saves the most work. The weather is dry enough to wash the patio and settled enough to start looking at paintwork, but not yet warm enough that anything dries in an hour, so give the patio two or three days before you decide whether it needs repointing. This is one of the two hinge months of the year, so it carries the twice yearly list: turn the mattress, swap the wardrobe over, oil the gate hinges and the locks, lift the drain covers and look. Clear the gutters of the seed and blossom that follows the leaves, and check the water heater valve and its tray.
Safety
- Test every smoke alarm
- Press the button on each one until it sounds. It takes two minutes and it is the single most useful thing on this list.
- Check the gate motor battery and the manual release
- Twice a year, and make sure everyone in the house knows how to release the gate by hand when the power is off.
Water and heating
- Check the water heater valve and its drip tray
- The pressure relief valve should be dry and the tray should be empty. A wet tray is the first sign of something worth calling about.
- Descale the kettle and the shower head
- Quarterly in a hard water area, less often in a soft one. A furred shower head sprays sideways long before it stops working.
- Wash the air conditioner filters
- Before the hot months, and again halfway through if it runs daily. A blocked filter costs more in electricity than the machine costs to clean.
- Clear the gutters and the downpipes
- After the leaves come down, and again before the rainy season. A blocked gutter puts water down a wall rather than into a drain.
Inside
- Turn or rotate the mattress
- Twice a year, at the same time as the wardrobe change. Most modern mattresses rotate rather than flip, which the label will say.
- Wash and put away the winter bedding
- Wash it before it goes away rather than when it comes out, and store it somewhere dry with the door left ajar.
- Clean the windows inside and out
- Twice a year is enough, and one of those should be just before the dark months, when every bit of light through the glass counts.
- Swap the wardrobe over
- Twice a year. Anything you did not wear at all last season is not going to be worn next season either.
Outside
- Oil the gate hinges and the locks
- A drop of oil twice a year keeps a gate closing properly. A lock that has gone stiff outdoors is usually water rather than wear.
- Wash the patio down
- In the settled weather before you start using it. Give it a day to dry properly and look for the joints that need repointing.
- Bring the garden furniture out and look at it
- Check the joints and the bolts before you sit on it, and give timber its oil while the weather is dry.
- Look at the window frames and sills
- Press a screwdriver gently into the bottom corners. Soft wood there is where rot starts and it is much cheaper caught early.
- Look at the pointing and the render
- After the frosts or the storms. Cracked pointing lets water into a wall and shows up inside a year or two later as damp.
- Lift the drain covers and look
- Twice a year. Standing water in a gulley means a blockage somewhere, and it is a great deal cheaper than a flood.
The garden edge
- Check the irrigation timer and the sprinklers
- Run every zone before the dry months and watch where the water actually lands. Half of most systems waters a fence.
Tick them off as you go
This page is the plain list for April. The same list is tickable onthe house through the year, where the ticks are kept on your own device and cleared at the start of each year. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The garden half of the month is on the almanac page forApril, which covers what to sow, what to plant out and what is ready to pick.