Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Maintain”
Does your home have rotten wood? Does the paint feel soft and spongy? Do you suspect the weather is getting into your wood and causing problems? Does the house/cabin smell ‘funny’ when you open the door? Then you might have some rot somewhere… I have spent almost 40 years working on old homes like yours and I am perfecting the art of carefully removing only the rotten parts and replacing them with new wood. Often the damage is only local, you don’t have to tear down the whole wall just …
My old Honda CRV’s steering has been a bit vague lately and with over 150,000 miles on the clock I replaced a few of the ‘starting-to-show-wear’ ball joints to start off with, but even then, it still tended to ‘tram-line’ when the wheels went over the centre line on the road, grabbing at them quite alarmingly if going at higher speeds. Obviously, this is a serious safety issue. There has also been a rattle when driving off-road that I’d never been able to trace. Turns out the rattle was the …
The main cause of valves becoming stuck is when they are opened fully and left there. The correct way is to open them fully and then close them half a turn or so. This enables a little ‘wiggle’ room for the valve when it slowly becomes stuck again over the years. A valve stuck hard against the stops is very difficult to persuade to move again. On stuck valves I always use a penetrating lube the day before, WD40 or such like. Try a little gentle tapping around the valve …
With this simple maintenance tip Ever noticed your vacuum cleaner isn’t pulling up as much dirt as normal? Now I know many folks will think this tip is blooming obvious, but I’m posting it for a reason. Day in and day out do I see vacuum cleaner heads like this (and no, I’m not kidding, I see this a LOT!)… Amazing huh? The way a vacuum cleaner works is simple; debris passes through little slots in the front brush and the suction of the motor pulls it up and into …
The best possible time to check your rainwater gutters and down pipes is….. drum roll please…. When it’s raining! I know, crazy huh? But believe me when I say that nothing beats a proper ‘wet’ check of your rainwater system. You can look at your gutters all you like on a sunny day, but if you don your waterproofs and head outside after it’s been raining solidly for a couple of hours you’ll learn tons more. Ignore the funny looks from your neighbours, tell them you’ve lost your goldfish or checking …
HOW TO LOOK AFTER YOUR HOME The earlier you spot potential home maintenance problems the quicker, easier, and cheaper it will be to fix them, protecting your most valuable asset. Get started today by reading this easy guide. Turns out that the guide is a bit long for a post here so you can download a PDF version at this link… Home Maintenance Guide, (feel free to share it). Hope you find it useful! Stay well Ian p.s. here is the long text, since ‘google’ can’t read the above PDF …
Remove any dust, clean the fan spindle and add a drop of oil. All the HP laptop fans I’ve ever had fail sooner or later, resulting in overheating and the main reason for this is that laptops suck in lots of dust over the months. This dust sticks to everything, the fan blades, the fins around the fan, and most critically, dust turns the tiny amount of lubricant on the fans spindle into thick, black goo (technical term!). The ease of the maintenance I’m about to describe depends on the model of your …
