Fall Home Maintenance in Connecticut: What to Fix Before the First Freeze

A Saturday in October saves you a week in January

Every November our phone starts ringing with the same kinds of calls. A pipe froze in the crawl space. Water is coming through the ceiling because the gutters backed up and froze. A back door won't close because the frame swelled over the summer and nobody got to it.

Most of those calls didn't have to happen. They're the result of small things that got pushed off until the weather decided for the homeowner. Here's the list we'd walk through if we were at your house this weekend.

Start with the roof

You don't need to climb up there. Grab a pair of binoculars, or walk around the house and look for shingles that are curled, cracked, or missing. Check the metal flashing around the chimney, vents, and skylights to see if any of it has lifted or pulled away.

Then go into the attic on a sunny day and turn off the light. If you can see daylight coming through anywhere, water can get in there too. Dark stains on the underside of the roof boards are another giveaway.

A couple of loose shingles is a quick fix. Wait until February, and you could end up with wet insulation, a stained ceiling, and a much bigger bill. Also worth knowing: asphalt shingles need some warmth to seal down properly, so roof repairs go a lot better in early fall than in the dead of winter.

Clean the gutters and check the downspouts

In Connecticut, with all the oaks and maples, gutters fill up fast in October. When they're packed with leaves, water spills over the edge and runs right down along your foundation. That's how many wet basements start.

In winter, it gets worse. Clogged gutters freeze solid, snow melts on the roof, and the water has nowhere to go. It backs up under the shingles and finds its way inside. Those are ice dams, and they cause a lot of ceiling damage every year.

Clean them out once most of the leaves are down. Make sure the downspouts actually drain and push water at least a few feet away from the house. If your gutters are sagging or pulling off the fascia, fix it now, before they can't handle snow and ice.

Shut off your outside faucets

This one takes five minutes and saves a lot of homeowners a very bad day. Unhook every garden hose. A hose left attached traps water in the faucet, and when it freezes it can split the pipe inside the wall. You won't know until spring when you turn it on and water pours into the basement.

Most older Connecticut homes have a shutoff valve for each outside faucet somewhere inside, usually in the basement near where the pipe goes through the wall. Close that valve, then open the outside faucet to drain the rest of the water. Leave it open for the winter.

If you can't find the inside valve, or the faucet drips even when it's off, have someone look at it before it gets cold.

Protect pipes in cold spots

Pipes that run through a crawl space, an unheated garage, an outside wall, or under a kitchen sink on an exterior wall are the ones that freeze first.

Foam pipe insulation from the hardware store is cheap and easy to put on. For pipes that have frozen before, heat cable is worth thinking about. On really cold nights, opening the cabinet doors under sinks on outside walls lets warm air reach the pipes. It sounds too simple to matter, but it does.

If you're heading somewhere warm for part of the winter, don't turn the heat way down. Keep it at least in the mid-50s, and have somebody check on the house.

Seal up the drafts

Walk around on a windy day and feel for air coming in around windows and doors. Old caulk dries out and cracks. Weatherstripping flattens out after a few years.

Fresh caulk around window and door frames, new weatherstripping, and a door sweep on the bottom of drafty exterior doors all make a real difference in how warm the house feels. They also keep water out when the rain comes sideways.

And if a door or window is sticking, fix it now. Wood swells and shrinks with the seasons, and a door that's hard to close in October can be impossible to latch in January.

Look at the basement and sump pump

If you have a sump pump, test it. Pour a bucket of water into the pit and make sure it kicks on and pumps out. Pumps tend to fail right when you need them, which is usually the middle of a heavy rain or a fast snowmelt.

While you're down there, look for new cracks, damp spots, or a musty smell. Any of those tells you water is getting in somewhere, and it's a lot easier to track down before the ground freezes.

Check the deck and stairs

Loose boards, wobbly railings, and popped nails on the deck or front steps are easy to ignore in summer. Add ice and snow and they turn into a real safety problem, especially for older folks or anyone carrying groceries. Tighten what's loose, replace rotted boards, and make sure every railing is solid.

Test the alarms

Swap the batteries in your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors, then test every one. With the heat running and the windows shut, a working CO detector matters more in winter than any other time of year. Most detectors also need replacing every 7 to 10 years, and the date is usually printed on the back.

Knock out the small stuff

Every house has a list. The towel bar that's hanging by one screw. The ceiling stain from last spring's leak that never got painted. The cabinet door that won't stay shut. The piece of trim the dog chewed.

None of it is urgent. But once winter hits and everyone is stuck inside, that list gets a lot more annoying. Fall is a good time to clear it out — and that's the kind of job some contractors won't return a call for. We will.

When it makes sense to call us

You can do a lot of this list yourself in a weekend. Give us a call if you see damage on the roof, the gutters are sagging or overflowing, you can't find the shutoff for an outside faucet, you've had frozen pipes before, there's water in the basement, the deck or stairs feel unsafe — or you'd rather hand the whole list to somebody and be done with it.

Call Northeast Home Repair at 203-585-8641. We'll tell you straight what needs doing now and what can wait.

Quick answers to common questions

When does it usually freeze in Connecticut? It depends where you live. Inland, the first frost can come in early October. Closer to the Fairfield County shoreline, it's often late October or into November — plan to finish outside work by mid-October to be safe.

How often should gutters be cleaned? At least twice a year, once in late spring and once in late fall after the leaves drop. If you have a lot of big trees near the house, you may need to clean them more often.

Do I really need to shut off my outside faucets? Yes, unless you have frost-free faucets; even then, you still need to unhook the hoses. It's one of the most common causes of burst pipes we see.

Can roof repairs be done in the winter? Emergency repairs, yes. But shingles seal best when it's warmer out, so it's smarter to handle roof work in the fall.

What should I do if a pipe freezes? Turn off the water to that line if you can, open the faucet, and warm the pipe slowly with a hair dryer or space heater. Never use an open flame. If it's already split or you can't find the frozen spot, call right away.