Fall Home Maintenance Checklist for Washington Homeowners

Fall sets two deadlines, and neither is a date on a calendar. The first is getting water off the roof and away from the wall before the heavy rain returns. The second is getting water out of the pipes, faucets and hoses before the first freeze. Order the work around those two, and the rest of a fall list falls into place.

The season sets its own schedule: what stands over your roof decides when the gutters need clearing, and where you live decides when the freeze arrives. This page is the fall list in order, with what you can settle from the ground and where a job belongs to someone else.

Two deadlines, and why neither is a date

Rain. In western Washington the rain stops and then returns all at once. WSU Extension describes the west-side climate as Mediterranean, with very little rainfall “from mid-June all the way through the end of September.” The leaves come down in the same weeks the wet season starts. That is why Snohomish County’s surface-water program tells owners under deciduous trees to clean the gutters in late fall, after the leaves have been shed, and gives homes under evergreens a different trigger: clean before the rainy season, and again after any storm that brings tree debris down.

Freeze. This deadline moves more than the rain deadline does. The National Centers for Environmental Information explains that the median first-freeze date is the date by which a freeze has happened in five years out of ten, and that elevation, latitude, topography and development all shift it. The Northwest’s window runs from the beginning of September to November. One forecast office shows how wide that window is: the National Weather Service office in Spokane publishes long-term average first-freeze dates of September 7 for Republic, September 19 for Colville, October 1 for Pullman, October 7 for Spokane, and October 21 for Wenatchee and Lewiston. The same table also gives first snow, and Spokane’s average first snow is November 13 — five weeks behind its first freeze. The averages show the window to work in. The forecast shows the week.

The whole-home maintenance calendar keeps these deadlines in season order.

The checklist, in order

1. Clear the roof line before the rain

Roof runoff is the first job, because it is the one the rain tests. The Pacific Northwest wildfire retrofit guide distributed by the Washington Military Department is direct: “Always keep the roof clean of debris.” It asks owners to clean the gutters and the roof areas where debris collects, and to inspect those areas at least twice a year, removing accumulated leaves and pine needles.

The debris does not sit only in the channel. The same guide points to the junctions where a roof meets a wall, and to the places under a deck and at the base of a fence, where debris collects and holds. A screen or cover changes where the debris lands. The guide warns that a device can keep material out of the channel and let it pile up on the roof behind it, where it still has to be cleared.

Everything on the ground is yours. The roof surface and the roof edge are not. The ground-level observations worth making, and the point at which a roof job belongs to a professional, are set out in the roof-care guide. How often your own roof needs clearing is decided by what stands over it, and that has its own page.

2. Follow the water past the downspout

A clear gutter that empties into the wrong place has moved the problem rather than solved it. Watch where each downspout discharges in a rain, then check the places that get forgotten: the outlets hidden behind a deck or under a stair. Snohomish County’s surface-water program asks owners to check the system for leaks, damaged parts, rust and evidence of past erosion, hidden outlets included.

The county’s guidance for the outlet is to route the water to a vegetated area of the property, “a minimum of 10 feet away from your foundation,” with a splash block or a similar feature so the flow does not erode the ground it lands on. Its cap on how much roof one downspout should carry is 700 square feet. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety’s winter checklist is shorter on distance and asks for three to four feet. The two figures differ; the point they share matters more: roof water has to leave the wall, and where it can go is a site question. Water pooling at the foundation is its own diagnosis, and it starts with watching the ground during rain.

3. Look for water on the outside, and seal the envelope

Fall finds leaks, because fall is when the water arrives. The Environmental Protection Agency’s guidance is to fix leaks in the building envelope as soon as possible, and not to let a foundation stay wet: provide drainage, and slope the ground away from it. Inside, the same rule covers anything that gets wet — dry it within 48 hours, which is the window in which mold can take hold.

The visible checks are the signs the EPA lists for water that has already found a way in: rippling wall coverings, cracked drywall tape, and peeling paint. Outside, the home-safety checklist asks for caulk and sealant around windows and doors, and weatherstripping until no daylight shows from inside. That seal is weatherproofing and moisture control at once.

4. Beat the first freeze to the plumbing and the hoses

The freeze tasks cost the most when they are missed, and most are reachable from outside. The winter checklist’s accessible list is to shut down the pool and the sprinkler system, and drain the outdoor faucets, irrigation system and hoses. If the house does not have frost-proof outdoor faucets — the checklist notes that homes built before 2010 typically do not — close the inside valve that feeds them or cover them from outside.

Inside, the same list asks you to insulate and seal penetrations around vents, piping and wiring through an exterior wall, and to wrap the pipes in unheated places: the attic, the crawl space, and the outside walls. Covering a ventilated crawl space for the winter belongs here too. So does the thermostat, and the checklist’s figure is to keep it at 55°F or above when the house is empty.

Servicing the heating system is the partner task: a preventive visit that changes the filters, confirms the system reaches its manufacturer-rated efficiency, and checks that the exhaust gases vent properly. The faucets, hoses and irrigation lines have detail of their own, and freezing-weather preparation is where that belongs.

5. Close out the fire season, and place the yard waste

Fall is when the fire season ends and the debris from it has to go somewhere. The Department of Natural Resources regulates outdoor burning on the forest land it protects, and its pile-size rule changes in mid-October. From July 1 to October 15 a debris pile is limited to four feet in every county. From October 16 through June 30 it is limited to ten feet — except in Island, King, Kitsap, Mason, Pierce, San Juan and Spokane counties, where it stays at four feet. A pile must be at least 50 feet from a structure, a hose or five gallons of water and a shovel must be on hand, and someone must attend the fire until it is completely out.

One rule removes the option most fall cleanups reach for. Yard and garden debris from improved property cannot be burned under DNR regulations at all. The Department of Ecology states where it can go instead: a compost bin, the curbside yard-waste container from your hauler, or a yard-debris drop-off site. It also states where it cannot. Dumping yard waste into state waters or a storm drain is illegal, and it can carry fines from the agency or from the local jurisdiction.

WSU Extension’s fire-resistant landscaping chapter sets out the season’s landscaping work. Its maintenance table marks raking, removing dead fuels, and cleaning up yard waste as primary fall tasks, along with thinning and pruning to remove the vegetation that could carry a fire from the ground into a tree. The chapter adds one timing caution: avoid pruning conifers such as pine, spruce and Douglas-fir from April through October, when adult pitch moths are active and drawn to fresh pruning wounds.

6. The service items that belong to fall

Three annual jobs sit naturally in the fall. The chimney gets its sweep before it is used. The heating system gets its preventive service before the first cold snap. The smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors get their check on the same schedule all year: test each unit once a month, change the batteries every six months, and replace the units every ten years or when the maker says so.

What is not a fall job

The list of work that fall should not talk you into is short.

• Any work on the roof surface or at the roof edge.
• Ladder work above a safe reach, and anything within reach of an overhead service drop.
• Limbing or felling trees and branches above head height.
• Electrical, gas, refrigerant and structural work.
• Anything past a professional chimney sweep.

Each goes to a licensed trade. Where a roof is suspected of trouble, the checklist’s own advice is to call a roofing professional rather than go up — the point is to find the problem before winter makes it an emergency.

Write down the freeze and what the water did

One line per event turns a fall list into a history of the house. Note the date of the first freeze you see, the first heavy rain and which downspout backed up, and where water appeared — the base of a wall, a ceiling, a crawl space. Two autumns of notes tell you how often your roof needs clearing, which way the water is moving, and whether a fix held.

The next step

Pick the order rather than the date. Start at the roof line, work the water outward from the wall to the outlet, seal what the rain finds, then get ahead of the freeze with everything that holds water. Check the forecast for the first freeze and the first long rain, and let those two dates move the rest of the list.