DIY - Is your home ready for the winter?

September is a good time to start preparing your home for the cold months ahead. Here is a list of projects you should consider in order to be ready for the winter...

1. Draught proofing
2. Door weather seals
3. Draught excluder
4. Loft foam insulation
5. Powerflush central heating
6. Central heating servicing
7. Energy saving lightbulbs
8. Fire door seal
9. Rubber window seals
10. Boiler repair service

You should arrange to have your chimney cleaned if you have one. This will make sure it's safe to use in the coming winter months, after all you don't want the house to be full of smoke the first time you light the fire.

Prepare for the worst. The country seems to get caught out each year but you don't need to. If there's snow or ice around you want to make sure you can at least get out of the house. Have you got salt and sand at the ready? What about a good shovel? Now's the time to find out.

Fill any holes around cables or pipes that come directly through the walls and into your home. It's not just draughts that you need to worry about, mice may be able to fit though those small openings too.

Check for bare patches of wood on your walls or anywhere where the paint has become damaged and peeled during the summer.

Check the outside of your house and see if there is anything that needs to be done. Look for any cracks or tiles that have come loose. If you have wooden window frames it's a good idea to take a look at them now in case the wood is bare or untreated.

If you have a garage then you should be cleaning it. It's easy to let a garage turn into a storage room if you park on the street most of the time. In order to protect your car from the frost, wind and rain it would be much better off under cover.

Is your home properly insulated? If not then you could well find yourself shivering through the cold months. In order to make your home snug there are certain rules you should follow:

* Fit a curtain across the front door. A heavy, well-fitted curtain will provide insulation and reduce draughts.
* Properly insulate your home and loft to reduce heat loss.
* Lag your hot water cylinder and pipes.
* Make your windows draught-proof by sealing the gaps around the window frame and between the frames.
* Fix draught-proofing around the sides of the doors and draught excluders to the bottoms of doors.
* Have heating systems serviced annually. Some gas or electricity suppliers offer free safety checks.

Diy Disasters

The Home & Garden Survey was carried out in November and December 2009 by Homebase and surveyed a total of 208,257people.  As the nation gears up for a bank holiday weekend and paintbrushes, drills, hammers and pasting tables are dusted off, Homebase has revealed the causes of the most common DIY disasters following the biggest home and garden survey ever conducted in the UK.

Homebase, asked more than 200,000 people about their DIY experiences and were inundated with tales of hammer horrors, painting panic and far-from-fool-proof-flooring. The DIY disaster league shows that the number one project likely to cause a calamity is painting and decorating, followed by flooring, hammering nails, drilling and plumbing.
Men are most likely to find themselves in a spot of bother when hammering nails, while for women it’s decorating. One in ten women have had a disaster doing the painting and decorating while 15% of females claimed their biggest disaster when it comes to DIY is their husband! With more than 1,000 of those surveyed claiming to have sustained an injury as a result of a DIY disaster.
Despite a few problems along the way the vast majority of people are still keen to have a go at Doing-It-Themselves with only 10% of respondents saying they rely on the experts for the whole job and 80% of people saying they get pleasure from improving their home doing DIY.

The Homebase DIY disaster league:
1. Painting and decorating
2. Flooring
3. Hammering nails
4. Drilling
5. Plumbing
Examples of DIY disasters shared with Homebase in the survey:
• Drilling holes through brand new central heating pipes 20 minutes before the carpet fitters were due to arrive
• Cutting an overgrown garden with a strimmer and hitting a stone resulting in a smashed conservatory window
• Hanging floral wallpaper upside down, with the pattern not matching
• Hammering a new shelf resulting in a flat screen TV being knocked off the other side of the wall and falling to pieces on the floor

Simon Yeomans, DIY category marketing manger at Homebase commented, “Easter weekend is always one of the busiest of the year for DIY with plenty of time to tackle important projects around the home. People are more likely to try something ambitious and our advice is to make sure you prepare well. Homebase has a series of ‘How To’ guides available in store and online for all the most popular projects with step-by-step instructions, top tips and the tools you need for the job.”