Please welcome today’s guest writer, Floralyn Teodoro.
The Most Common Home Problems and How to Solve Them
How beautiful our exteriors sometimes makes us disregard the most common home problems we should also be addressing internally. For a home that looks and feels good from the inside out, read on for helpful tips.
You may already feel comfortable or used to in your home too much you fail to notice the most common home problems your home is already experiencing. These problems may go from simple stinky sinks to more serious ones including pest infestation.
Take a minute or more to check and inspect your home especially if it’s an old one. Addressing different home problems promptly won’t only make your home more comfortable and livable, it can also help you save your budget and the environment too.
Figured out the problem areas in your home? Here are the most common house problems you may encounter and the tips on how to address and solve them:
Stinky sinks
Does your kitchen’s smell make you cringe even after throwing the trash outside? A smelly sink can be caused either by your sink’s garbage disposal unit that’s been filled with gunk, a dried out U-shaped pipe that allows the entry of methane gas, debris blockage, or worse, nesting animals.
What to do:
To fix a dried out pipe, pour out a quart or four cups of water down the drain and air out the area for a few hours. Once the smell goes away, pour a teaspoon of vegetable oil to protect your drain from drying out and attracting methane gas.
To fix the smell from your garbage disposal, turn the unit off and dump in one to two cups of ice. After this, turn the water on and run the unit. If you see the ice disintegrate, turn off both the disposal and the water tap. Prepare equal parts of vinegar and baking soda. Dump one cup of baking soda down the drain followed by one cup of vinegar and see the mixture fizz. Then, finish it off with hot water and cut-up citrus fruits.
However, for the latter more serious culprits, you need a plumber to investigate and fix them.
Lime deposits
Fail to see the shimmer and shine on your faucets, tubs, toilets, pipes, pots, kettles, and other appliances? The white crusty film that shows up on fixtures and appliances is called limescale. Limescale build-up results from hard water that leaves behind mineral deposits such as alkaline.
Besides spoiling your home’s visual appeal by leaving traces on tapware, limescale or lime deposits can also obstruct and oxidize pipes, increase use of cleaning products, reduce the life of electrical appliances, and bring difficulties in washing machine use. It can also dry up the skin.
What to do:
In preventing limescale buildup in the kitchen, all you need are paper towel or cloth, white vinegar, and baking soda. Just soak the cloth in white vinegar, wrap it around your tapware, and wait for an hour before wiping it clean with a dry cloth.
In eliminating lime deposits in toilet bowls, create a solution with equal parts borax and white vinegar. All you need to do is to drain the toilet bowl, pour in the solution, and wait for at least two hours before scrubbing it with a toilet brush.
In cleaning shower doors, spray with white vinegar, let sit, rinse and wipe off. In spraying shower doors, you can also use vodka and white wine.
Creepy critters
Wondering why pests and critters are pestering your home? Curious as to how they entered your home? If scurrying ants or mouse and bird droppings are present in your home, there may be entryways in your home such as obvious cracks and gaps that need to be checked and closed.
These critters not only pose harm to your home, they can also potentially endanger your health.
What to do:
Check all areas and corners in your home that can serve as entry points for these critters into your home. Look for signs of chewing, nesting, gaps, and cracks. Fix these openings immediately to avoid attracting more critters to enter. We also advise calling a professional exterminator as they know best how to control these critters.
Mold or Mildew
Are there areas in your home that smell musty? This musty smell can be brought about either by mold or mildew. Mold and mildew grow in places where high humidity is present or where there is poor ventilation. Besides the musty smell, this biological growth can result to damage and rotting of structural and non-structural elements, premature paint failure, and some health problems.
Mold and mildew can often be seen in places such as the bathroom, kitchen, laundry and drying area, under the sink cabinet, basement, and attic where high levels of indoor humidity are present.
What to do:
To control moisture and levels of humidity in your home, use ventilation fans. Just make sure the ventilation fans are vented directly to the outside. Also, be mindful to check your pipes and your roof for early prevention or immediate solution of water leaks. Leaks can lead to mold and mildew.
HVAC noises
Do you hear weird noises from your HVAC? A properly working (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning) unit is relatively silent, and other sounds you may hear are normal. However, thumping, banging, squealing, screeching, and rattling noises are signals indicating there’s something wrong with either the compressor, blower motor, or the belts in your HVAC equipment.
What to do:
If you ever hear weird noises from your HVAC equipment, it’s best to call your HVAC technician immediately. And, for prevention, make sure to have your HVAC unit checked twice per year to make sure it’s running smoothly. More than that, you can save your wallet from extra repair costs.
Damaged roofs
Starting to experience leaks from your ceilings? The problem may be on your roof. Roof damage is one of the most common and frequent problems of many homeowners. It can be caused by improper flashing, missing shingles, and a sagging roofline, which often results in roof leakage.
What to do:
First, you need to make it a habit always to check and inspect your roof and attic area. In case you find any damage, call a professional to do the repairs for you. If the damage is less serious, you can also do the repairs yourself. You also need to practice regular inspection of your roof to help prevent and avoid serious roof problems and the expensive repair costs that come with it.
Extreme temps
Do the rooms in your home experience extreme temperatures? Are there rooms that are too hot while some are too cold? Extreme temperatures in the different rooms in your home can be results of different factors including insufficient insulation, air leaks, poor ventilation, unsafe exhaust disposal, blocked chimneys, malfunctioning ducts, and an improperly installed HVAC system.
What to do:
To properly control the temperature in your home, you must minimize unnecessary heat transfer between your home’s exterior and interior space. Start with fixing malfunctioning ducts, leaks, or blocked exhausts. Next, choose from the different control systems available in the market: a standard on and off the thermostat, a system that’s both a thermostat and a humidistat, and the more advanced versions you can program and monitor over the Internet.
An authentic home sweet home isn’t only visually appealing; it also looks and feels good on the inside. Achieve a home that works well from the inside out by addressing the most common home problems your home may be facing today.
Author Bio:
Floralyn Teodoro is a writer of all sorts who works for HomeBuysPlus and other websites. When she’s not writing, she’s probably traveling or reading books and poetry.
