Almost every expensive repair in a home starts out as a cheap one that nobody got round to. This is the plain version: what needs doing around a UK home, how often, season by season and the handful of checks that are a legal duty rather than good practice.
Almost every expensive repair in a home starts out as a cheap one. A gutter blocks, water runs down the wall instead of into the drain and two winters later the plaster is coming off in the back bedroom.
None of that is difficult to prevent. The problem is that home maintenance is not one job. It is about thirty small jobs on about eight different schedules and no single one of them ever feels urgent enough to do today.
This is the whole list, written out plainly: what needs doing around a typical UK home, how often and what happens if it waits.
The short version
- Service the boiler once a year and keep the paperwork, because many warranties depend on it
- Clear the gutters twice a year and always once the autumn leaves are down
- Test the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms monthly, which takes about a minute
- Bleed the radiators and check the boiler pressure before the heating goes on
- Landlords have legal duties that owner occupiers do not and those carry fixed dates
- Write down what you did and when, or you will be guessing about it in five years
Why a schedule beats a list of jobs
A list of jobs tells you what to do. It does not tell you when. And when is the part people actually get wrong.
Almost nothing in a house needs doing continuously. It needs doing once a year, or twice a year, or every five years, on a schedule that has nothing to do with when you happen to think about it. A boiler service is no more urgent in March than in February, but it is a great deal more urgent in October than in November.
So the useful version of a maintenance checklist is not really a list. It is a calendar.
How often each job needs doing
The intervals below are the ones most UK homes run to. Adjust them for your own house: a home under trees needs its gutters clearing more often than one on an open street; a wood burner in daily use needs sweeping more often than one lit at Christmas.
| Job | How often | Why that interval |
|---|---|---|
| Boiler serviced | Every 12 months | Manufacturers usually require it to keep the warranty valid |
| Gutters and downpipes cleared | Twice a year | Blocked gutters are behind a lot of damp walls |
| Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms tested | Monthly | Batteries fail silently and the alarm cannot tell you |
| Radiators bled | Once a year, before autumn | Trapped air stops the top of the radiator heating |
| Boiler pressure checked | Every few months | A slow drop usually means a leak worth finding early |
| Chimney or flue swept | Every 12 months if used regularly | Soot builds up, which is both a fire risk and a carbon monoxide risk |
| Drains and gullies cleared | Once a year | Far cheaper than the emergency callout when they back up |
| Roof looked over | Once a year and after any storm | Slipped tiles are usually obvious from the ground if you look |
| External woodwork and paint | Every three to five years | Bare timber rots quietly and then needs replacing |
| Fencing and decking treated | Every one to two years | Treatment is cheap, replacement is not |
| Extractor fans and filters cleaned | Every six months | A blocked fan is why the bathroom keeps growing mould |
| Trip switch (RCD) tested | Every six months | Press the test button and it should cut the power instantly |
| Electrical installation inspected | Every ten years if you live there | Sooner if the wiring is old or you have had work done |
| Water stopcock turned | Twice a year | A seized stopcock gets discovered during a leak, not before |
None of these is a big job on its own. The reason they slip is that they are spread across the year and not one of them announces itself.
Spring: check what winter did
Spring is for damage assessment. Something has almost certainly moved, cracked or blocked between November and March and this is the cheapest moment to find it.
- Look over the roof from the ground, including after the last storm of the winter
- Clear the gutters and downpipes of everything that came down in autumn and sat there
- Check external paintwork and window frames for bare or soft timber
- Clear the drains and gullies before the spring rain
- Check fences and gates that have taken a winter of wind
- Service the garden tools and get the mower going before you need it
Summer: do the outside jobs
Dry weather and long evenings make this the only sensible window for anything involving paint, timber or a ladder.
- Paint and treat external woodwork, fences and decking
- Repoint any brickwork that has started to lose its mortar
- Check the loft for insulation gaps, daylight through the roof, damp or wildlife
- Clean the extractor fans and their filters
- Have the chimney swept while the fire is not in use, when sweeps are easier to book
- Book the boiler service now rather than in October, when every engineer is busy
Autumn: get ready for the heating
This is the busiest stretch of the maintenance year, because everything that keeps the house warm and dry has to work from here on.
- Bleed the radiators and check the boiler pressure
- Run the heating for an hour before you actually need it, so a failure is an inconvenience rather than an emergency
- Clear the gutters again once the leaves are down
- Check that outside taps and exposed pipes are lagged
- Test every smoke and carbon monoxide alarm
- Check the loft hatch and the draught proofing
Winter: watch the things that freeze
Winter maintenance is mostly watching rather than doing.
- Know where the stopcock is and check that it still turns
- Keep an eye on the boiler pressure gauge
- Look for condensation and early mould on cold walls and window reveals
- Keep snow and leaves clear of air bricks and boiler flues
- After a storm, look over the roof, fences and gutters again
Write down what you did
The maintenance itself is only half of it. The other half is the record.
Two things depend on it. The first is you: in three years you will genuinely not remember whether the chimney was swept last autumn or the one before and the honest answer will be to pay for it again. The second is whoever buys the house. A buyer's solicitor asks what has been done and "quite a lot, I think" is not an answer that moves a sale along.
A record does not need to be elaborate. The date, what was done, who did it, what it cost and the certificate or invoice if there was one. That is enough to answer almost any question either of you will ever ask.
This is the same argument as the one for a digital property logbook: capture it as it happens, because reconstructing it afterwards is the expensive version.
How to keep on top of it without it taking over
Nobody keeps a maintenance calendar in their head and very few people keep one on paper for more than a few months.
What works is having the reminders come to you. Set the interval once for each job, then only think about it when something is genuinely due. That turns thirty jobs on eight schedules into a handful of small prompts spread across the year, which is a completely different thing to manage.
Whatever you use, the principle is the same: decide the interval once, record what you did on the day you did it and stop trying to remember.
Let the house tell you what is due
homehogs keeps the schedule, sends the reminder and files the certificate against the job, so the record builds itself while you live there.
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