Following the likely launch of the Government’s Green Deal in the Autumn this year, SPAB's National Maintenance Week is getting back to basics.
Now in its 11th year, National Maintenance Week is organised by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) to encourage everyone who cares for a property (and not necessarily ancient ones!) to take a few simple steps to prepare their building for the onset of winter.
The annual campaign is designed to be simple, instructive and effective - hence its focus on easily achievable chores like clearing gutters and drains and checking for missiing roof tiles or broken/cracked pipes.
Putting these issues right can really make a difference to a property.
This year National Maintenance Week runs from Friday November 23 to Friday November 30, culminating in National Gutters Day.
It's not a glamorous date for the diary, but even if people don't do anything else during the week, they might spend just 10 minutes on November 30 checking the performance and condition of their guttering.
For 2012 the campaign goes back to basics. Likely to follow hot on the heels of the launch of the Government's Green Deal to make buildings across the country more energy efficient, SPAB’s simple, bottom-line message is that a badly maintained building cannot be an energy efficient building, no matter what else you do to it.
10 SPAB tips to make a difference
1. Maintain your building – catch problems before they catch you out.
2. Repair your building – fix a leaky roof or blocked gutter and find the source of a damp problem - a dry house is a warmer house!
3. Understand your building – allow surfaces to breathe and work with the original building construction and plan form
4. Understand how much your building costs to run – do you know how much gas, electricity and water you use?
5. Understand your behaviour in the building – do you have to heat the whole house and for what periods?
6. Install efficient heating system and controls – design your heating system around how you use the building and make the controls as user-friendly as possible
7. Control air infiltration – keep on top of internal decoration, carpet suspended timber floors, hang thick curtains, install window draught-proofing, secondary glazing or wooden shutters
8. Get your insulation right – by all means insulate lofts and insulate underfloor voids, but remember not to block or impede ventilation in those areas as this can lead to problems
9. Ventilate moisture away at source – remove moisture from bathrooms and kitchens before it circulates and condenses
10. Pull on a woolly jumper and thicker socks! – it might sound simple, but this common sense solution can really make a difference