Winter Checklist

Hi, it’s Phil from Sunshine. I’d like to talk to you today about a winter checklist. Hopefully, as a landlord you’ve already done this, but just in case you haven’t, and as the worst of the weather seems to be upon us at the moment, I think it’s good to recap. Internally, you need to look at the boiler, the boiler needs to be efficient, it needs to run well, and be cost effective from the tenant’s point of view to actually use. If not, the tenant will complain at some point, particularly when the bills come in regarding gas.

You need to make sure that the flues, which is the vent outside, are not cluttered, covered, and particularly with spider’s cobwebs, which have a habit of getting inside the vent and blocking actual air circulation. That is very important to do.

You also need to check the ventilation within the property, it’s nice to have a boiler that works but you need to be able to vent the property and make sure that some cold air is actually getting into the property and circulating, otherwise it becomes very musty, and can lead to another problem, condensation, [inaudible 00:01:13].

So, regarding windows, the triple vents need to work on double glazed units, and any single glazed items, which I would imagine would be rare nowadays, you need to make sure they’re not too drafty and they do close properly.

Regarding condensation, this is a big issue that we’ve already covered, and you can refer to the other video, but it is important that from the point of view of the tenant you make them aware of the issues regarding hot and cold, and ventilation. They are the key parts, apart from their own behavior, which you need to be able to monitor.

Lastly, you need to check for leaks within the property, particularly around radiators and radiator valves. But again, these can happen very slowly, hardly noticed, particularly through the summer, you fire up the boiler and suddenly there’s a little leak, pressure goes on the boiler, tenants complaining the boiler’s not working properly.

There are other issues that we can discuss, those can be dealt with at a later date.