Category: Domestic

With the weather turning ever colder, now is the time to ensure that your property is ready for the rain, ice and snow that will surely head our way. These conditions can badly affect your property, not to mention your wallet, but there are ways to prepare that help minimise the risk. Here are five ways to protect your home for winter.

Fix Structural Damage

Sometimes we just live with issues rather than taking action at the time. Whether it is because of concern over the cost, worries about the potential disruption or purely because you are too busy to ring around for quotes. However, when it comes to structural damage to your house, the earlier you sort it, the less it will cost you and the less disruption it will cause. 

Leaving cracks, bowed walls, uneven floors, sticking windows or doors, or any other issue can lead to them causing further problems along the line, particularly in the harsh winter months. If you have any problems with your home, contact James Beeby today for a free, no-obligation quote on any work you need completing. 

Clear Your Gutters and Drains

Winter follows autumn and one of the most damaging things autumn does to your property is to clog up your gutters and drains with dead leaves. If you don’t clean out these blockages, you will find water backing up and damaging the house. 

You could start to find patches of damp on the walls, which need to be rectified. In some circumstances, the water could cause structural damage to your home. If you spot cracks appearing in your walls, you should contact us immediately to assess the damage and to discuss the best course of action to remedy the issue. 

However, to help avoid water damage caused by blocked gutters and drains, make sure you clear them out before the weather really turns. 

Keep Your Pipes Warm

Another source of winter water damage comes from burst pipes. One UK insurance company estimated that burst and frozen pipes cost them more than £26 million last year. Around 15,000 claimants are now paying increased premiums after having to put in claims for this type of damage. 

The good news is that you can protect against this. Once the cold sets in, you should make sure your central heating is running at a very minimum of 10 degrees, although between 12 and 15 degrees is recommended. This ensures that the water in the pipes doesn’t freeze, crack the piping, and cause a leak. 

In addition, you can lag your pipes to keep them warm. At a cost of around £1 a metre, this cover for your exposed piping is much easier on the bank balance than having to deal with the fallout from a crack or burst.

Sort Out Your Loft

Your loft can play an important role as you protect your home for winter. As the weather begins to turn, you should make sure that it is adequately insulated. This helps keep the heat in the house, which is great for fending off mould and damp. It also means you need to use less energy to keep you toasty, which could save you a wedge of cash too. 

An insulated loft is a great help for protecting your home, but it also needs to be well ventilated too. If the air circulates in the correct manner, you minimise the risk of ice dams forming. 

An ice dam is a section of frozen water that forms at the edge of your roof in temperatures of zero degrees and below. If you do not have adequate ventilation in your loft, sections towards the top of the roof can heat up, thawing the snow or ice at the top of the roof, which starts to slide down towards the dam. Because the dam is still at freezing point, it holds strong and the thawed ice or snow builds up behind it, meaning it can seep in through your roof, causing damp. 

Check Your Roof

As well as the loft, it makes sense to check on the state of your roof before the long, hard winter months take over. Look for broken tiles, pointing issues, cracks in the chimney and more. If you don’t fancy shinning up a ladder yourself, talk to a professional who can give it a once over for you. Beeby Construction Services will provide you with a free quotation on any work you might need doing to get your roof winter ready. 

Ready to Protect Your Home For Winter?

If this has inspired you to protect your home for winter, give James a call today on 01530 610527 or 07849 456962. Beeby Construction Services is a Leicester builder who covers the whole of the Midlands. We pride ourselves on going above and beyond what our customers expect, and much of our work is repeat custom or referrals from satisfied clients. Take a look at our Domestic Services page to see what we could do for you. 

Building Services Across the Midlands

Contact Beeby Construction Services Today

 

I complete a lot of structural repair work in the East Midlands, so I know how worrying these issues can be for householders. There are a number of different possible factors as to why your building has moved and why cracks have developed, but the good news is that my team and I have seen and repaired them all. Using our experience from more than a decade of East Midlands building repairs, I’ve put together a guide to the most common structural repair issues and what we can do about them.

Why Buildings Move and How Cracks Develop

When you call me and my team in to perform a structural repair, the first job is to work out why the building has moved. Potential causes include: 

• Water damage. 
• Subsidence or other ground movement.
• Restraints or ties that aren’t sufficient.
• Failure of the materials used in construction.

We will let you know whether the damage to your property is caused by one of the above or any other issue and then present a plan detailing how best my team can fix the problem. We get to know you and your home so we can offer the remedy that best suits you and your situation. 

Although any cracking and movement is a concern, you can be confident that we can solve it. We pride ourselves on the quality of our work, our professionalism and our ability to rectify the issue to your satisfaction. A large portion of our work comes from repeat custom from happy customers across the East Midlands or from their referrals. 

How We Go About Building Repairs

Modern technology means that building repairs are no longer as time-consuming and disruptive to your day-to-day life as was once the case. Performing a structural repair is also preferable (for your pocket as well as for the environment) to demolishing and rebuilding a property. 

The scheme of repairs depends on a number of factors:

• The reason for the movement and cracking. 
• The use of the building.
• The materials used in the build.
• The feasibility of the building repairs. 

Each structural issue requires its own remedy. For subsidence, the old and costly method of underpinning is being phased out. The current method involves stabilising it by injecting materials into the ground. Once the suggested method has been used, then we need to fix the broken bonds within the structure. These are caused by the cracks, as is the case for many other causes of cracking.

In situations where the ties in cavity walls have corroded, the usual course of action is to install stainless steel ties to shore up the structure. Another common structural repair involves crack stitching. This entails retrofitting and grouting bars along the crack to stabilise the masonry. Other situations require a lintel replacement or a strengthening of masonry panels. 

Need a Structural Repair in the East Midlands?

If you need a structural repair performing in the East Midlands and beyond, contact me straight away. My team and I can help bring you peace of mind that we will fix the problem. Customer satisfaction is at the heart of everything we do at Beeby Construction Services. We pride ourselves on keeping you informed, letting you know what the problem is, and how we’ll fix it. 

We carry out building repairs in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Loughborough, Burton, Tamworth, Nuneaton, Lichfield and everywhere in between. In addition, we are also garage conversion specialists, perform loft conversions, build extensions and more. Take a look at the Domestic Services page for more information.