Looking after your property during winter

This week has been a dreadful week for many landlords with empty properties, as the cold weather takes its toll writes property blogger Lea Beven.

Over the coming weeks, landlords will need to take some action to prevent some costly heating bills and avoid paying out for unnecessary repairs.

Freezing pipes

Give your exposed pipes a once over and check that the lagging (insulation) is fitted on them properly – there should be no gaps, tears or bits missing.

It is a lot cheaper to prevent freezing or burst pipes than it is to repair them afterwards.

This week in a beautiful property in Penn, which still has an outside toilet, the pipes froze, which forced the tap from the top of the pipe and created a hot lake which quickly turned the garden into an ice rink.

It had been running for two days before anybody noticed and, because the heating engineers are snowed under currently, the call out for repair has taken a couple of days.

Fortunately, the property is not set to receive tenants until the weekend and it should all be fixed by then.

In a Shifnal property, a communal area downstairs was exposed to the cold because the front door had been propped open – causing a 1st floor flat to have no water at all.

Just check that all of your doors close properly and that pipes are sufficiently insulated – this can prevent freezing and burst pipes.

If your property is empty and you are leaving the heating off – you must drain your pipes. The best thing to do is to leave your heating on low – at about 15 degrees – and pop in to check frequently.

If you don’t then when the weather starts to thaw out then you may find pipes that have burst, but frozen – they’ll suddenly start gushing once they have melted so keep a close eye on them.

Watch your heating bill

If you include bills into the overall rent on your property, then you should pop around occasionally to check on the heating status.

Last week, we walked into a four-person flat share in the middle of the day to find that it was like a sauna and everyone was dressed in shorts and t-shirts.

Another house share had been given limited heating set on a timer, but the tenant had been out and bought a plethora of high-wattage electric heaters to heat up the property during the day and middle of the night.

If you do have to use electric heaters take a look at this website which gives the running costs for different types – the best buy is the 400W which costs just over 5p an hour.

Some of the 3000W heaters cost 41p an hour – if you run that for eight hours a day then you’re looking at an extra bill of over £20 per week on top of your normal heating costs.

Winter can be an expensive time for home-owners if you don’t pay due care and attention – be careful.