The thrifty homeowner’s guide to autumn and winter
Ten places to check around your house before the weather makes the decision for you. Free, and written by someone who has spent twenty years reading the signs.
As autumn settles over Hertfordshire and North-West London, houses start to talk. A hairline crack in the render that wasn’t there in June. A window that’s begun to rattle in its frame. A patch on the ceiling that dries out, then comes back after the next downpour. The trick isn’t spotting them — it’s knowing which to leave and which to sort before winter, when a wet spell can turn a twenty-minute job into a spring re-render.
Most of it gets missed. Not because people don’t care about their homes, but because nobody has ever told them what to look for, or when to look.
Roger has spent over twenty years reading these signs — on Victorian terraces with lime plaster, 1930s semis with solid walls, and new-builds still settling in. Rendering, plastering and damp are his trade, and PRA Plastering covers Rickmansworth, Watford, St Albans, Harrow and Hemel Hempstead. A house doesn’t need you to be an expert; it needs someone to check in on it twice a year, before the weather makes the decision for you.
This page is that check-in: ten things to look at, what’s fine to leave, what’s worth a professional eye before winter, and why the timing matters more than the job itself. Work through it here, or scroll down to download the whole guide as a printable PDF — we’ll email it straight over so you’ve got it to hand when you’re walking the house.
The ten autumn & winter checks
What’s fine to leave, what’s worth a professional look, and why the timing matters.
External render cracks
You notice it on a dry day, running a hand along the wall out of habit more than concern. A thin line, barely wider than a pencil mark.
Leave it if: it's genuinely hairline and hasn't grown or changed in months. Keep an eye on it, and mention it next time someone's round for other work.
Get it looked at if: a coin fits edge-on into it, or it's grown since you last checked.
Why now, not spring: a crack left through a dry summer stays cosmetic. The same crack left through a wet winter lets water in, and when that water freezes, it expands. A twenty-minute patch in October can be a full re-render by March.
Internal plaster and damp
A patch on a bedroom wall that’s slightly darker than the rest. A corner that feels cold even with the heating on.
Leave it if: the patch stays dry. Most of this is condensation, moist air meeting a cold surface, and it's rarely a sign the building itself is faulty. Ventilate when you cook or shower, and keep a low background heat through the coldest months rather than letting rooms go properly cold.
Get it looked at if: the patch is damp to the touch, has started showing black speckling, or the plaster sounds hollow when you tap it, feels soft, or crumbles at the edges. That's blown plaster, and ventilation won't fix it.
Why now, not spring: mould and blown plaster both get worse, not better, left over winter.
Gutters
You spot it mid-downpour: water sheeting off the corner of the guttering instead of running through it. Nine times out of ten that's a blockage, leaves, moss and the general debris of a British summer, rather than damage.
Safe to do yourself: clearing debris from ground level with an extendable tool.
Worth paying for: anything that needs a ladder. Falls from height are one of the most common causes of serious home-maintenance injuries, so this is exactly the kind of job worth paying someone properly equipped for.
Why now, not spring: standing water left in a blocked gutter over a hard frost can crack the guttering itself, turning a clearing job into a replacement one. Clear twice a year, once after the leaves have properly dropped in autumn, again in spring.
Draughts, doors and windows
Draughts tend to collect around four spots on an external door: the keyhole, the letterbox, the gap at the bottom, and the gaps around the frame edges. Windows suffer the same problem when their seals have shrunk or worn with age.
Safe to do yourself: this whole one. Foam strips, letterbox brushes and keyhole covers cost very little and take an afternoon to fit. A properly draught-proofed home typically saves somewhere in the region of thirty to fifty pounds a year on heating.
One thing to skip: don't draught-proof internal doors. Leave a gap so air can circulate properly; sealing them just traps damp air where it isn't wanted.
Chimney
If you use an open fire or a wood burner, the chimney needs sweeping. This isn't a nice-to-have. Soot and creosote build-up is a genuine fire risk, and an unswept flue is one of the more avoidable causes of house fires each year.
Book now, don't wait for the schedule, if: you've heard scratching, seen birds around the chimney pot, or noticed smoke drifting back into the room instead of up the flue.
Otherwise: sweep twice a year if you burn wood, once a year for smokeless fuels, with the first sweep timed just before you start using the fire regularly for the season.
Boiler and heating
A boiler that's slower to respond, or heating that's become noisier than it used to be, is usually trying to tell you something before it actually breaks down.
Book in autumn, before the first cold snap, not after it. Once everyone's heating fails in the same freezing week, engineers get booked solid and you end up waiting far longer than you'd like.
Every year, regardless: an annual service catches most faults early, while they're cheap to fix. It's also a safety matter (a poorly maintained boiler carries a genuine carbon monoxide risk), and most manufacturer warranties require documented annual servicing to stay valid.
Outside taps and pipes
An outside tap left connected through a hard frost is one of the more common, and most avoidable, causes of a burst pipe. Water left in an exposed pipe freezes, expands, and cracks the pipe from the inside. You often don't find out until the thaw, when it starts leaking.
Safe to do yourself, before the first proper frost: disconnect hoses, insulate any exposed outdoor pipework, and know where your stop valve is before you need it in a hurry.
If a pipe has already frozen: turn off the stop valve, then thaw it gently with a hairdryer or hot water bottle, never a naked flame.
Call someone if: it's already burst. Turn off the stop valve first, then call a plumber.
Fencing, gates and drainage
Garden structures take the same freeze-thaw and wind punishment as the house itself, with less attention paid to them. A fence panel leaning slightly now is far easier to straighten and re-secure than one that's fully come down in a storm.
Not urgent, but: put a leaning panel, a dragging gate, or slow garden drainage on the "before the next storm" list, not the "whenever" one. Standing water anywhere near the house foundations is worth sorting before winter rainfall makes it worse.
Why now, not spring: a loose panel is far more likely to come down in high wind, and at that point the fix is bigger and more expensive.
Loft insulation
If one room in the house never seems to hold heat the way the others do, insulation is usually the first thing worth checking, particularly loft insulation. A genuinely uninsulated roof can be responsible for around a quarter of a home's total heat loss.
Safe to do yourself: topping up thin or patchy insulation. It's one of the more cost-effective jobs in this guide, typically paying for itself within a few years through lower heating bills, and it has no moving parts once it's in place.
Worth getting a proper quote if: you can still see the joists clearly through the insulation. That usually means it's too thin for current guidance, and it's worth getting the depth checked properly rather than guessing.
Ventilation and background heat
You don't need to remember all of this. That's what the checklist below is for. But if there's one habit worth keeping through winter, it's this one: ventilate when you cook or shower, and keep a low background heat through the coldest months rather than letting rooms go cold, even when you're out.
This one habit prevents more damp problems than almost any other single fix.
Your autumn & winter maintenance calendar
You don’t need to remember all of this — work down it in order, and book the professionals early.
Quick-win checklist
Ten jobs, one page. Nothing here needs an expert to spot — only to fix, and only if you’d rather not.
Want this as a PDF you can keep?
Same ten checks, the full maintenance calendar and the checklist, in one document you can save or print. No spam, just the guide.
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Prefer to talk it through? Call Roger on 07920 827 685.
Based in Hertfordshire and North-West London
Roger and PRA Plastering cover Rickmansworth, Watford, St Albans, Harrow and Hemel Hempstead. If one of these checks has turned up something worth a second opinion, get in touch.