A few preventive measures to protect your home and its appliances from monsoon
Everyone loves rain; particularly if it comes after a long summer. But it gives rise to many problems to your constructions too. Most of them are related to moisture and leakage. So, let me provide a few safety measures and precautions to protect your home and its appliances from ‘rain attack’ so that you can enjoy the real taste of monsoon. To protect your home from leakage, paint your roof with leakage-proof paints in cheap rate. A few more tips for you.
Special care for your interior, furniture and equipments
To protect upholstery
During rainy season, your upholstery may get fungal attack due to moisture and humidity of rooms. To avoid this, when it’s warm climate with pleasant sun, open your windows to allow maximum sunlight and air inside. If possible you can dry your upholstery work in sun.
What carpets need
During rainy season, more chances are there for mud and moisture in your carpets. So, at regular intervals clean your carpets using vacuum cleaner. It helps to remove dust particles and moisture content hidden inside your carpets. It will get rid of that bad odourl too. No need to use rugs during rainy season. Wrap them in polythene sheets and place safe till monsoon has gone.
For electrical equipments
When there is thunder and lightning never use electric or electronic appliances. Switch off your appliances and remove its plug from switch board. If you are not at home, it’s better to switch off the main power.
Lamps outside your home
More chances are there for short circuits during rainy season. So, examine the lights and connections outside your home periodically to avoid dangers during monsoon. Switches should be away from moisture. So, switches and connections outside your home can be covered well to block similar problems. Also remove damaged lamps and switches before monsoon reaches you.
Check your inverter
Power problems are common during rainy season. So, solve the problems of inverters if exist. Check water level of battery periodically and fill it, if needed.
Dry cupboards
If wooden shelves and wardrobes get moisture attack, they will surely be affected by fungus giving a bad smell. Camphor placed inside your cupboards can absorb moisture considerably. Placing salt or char coal in a dish inside the cupboards can also give good solutions to moisture attack. To avoid pest attack of rainy climate, you can place neem leaves or cloves inside your almirahs. If you place perfumed bath salts in the lower shelves of your cupboard, you can get rid of the bad smell due to moisture.
While cleaning your furniture
Never use moist cloth to clean your furniture. Use only dry cotton for cleaning wooden furniture.
Books
It’s a good idea to put a few newspapers on drawers of shelves before you arrange your books. Newspaper will absorb excess moisture in the atmosphere. Once in every week take those books out and place them back, after exposure to light and air. Sprinkle a little citronella oil also.
Special care for clothes
Never wash all clothes together. First wash those clothes that dry easily. Once they are dried you can wash second set. If you soak your clothes in bleach liquor for half an hour, it gets rid of black spots on your clothes. If not dried well under sun, your clothes may get bad smell and black spot attack. But in rainy season it’s difficult to dry clothes under direct sunlight. So, let me provide you a solution. Add a little Eau de Cologne to the water used for rinsing clothes last.
Great care for doors
It’s a common problem for wooden doors and windows during rainy season; they can’t be closed easily. Actually, wooden pieces absorb moisture from atmosphere and they increase their volume slightly resulting in problems to close them tight. If bolts and joints get loosened the same problem may occur. You can use a sandpaper to rub on those surfaces if you feel difficulty in closing them. When sunlight is available, open those closed doors and windows to allow sunlight inside. If not, wooden doors and windows get fungal attack easily. Use a little vinegar, apply it on a piece of cotton and clean your windows. Fungus can be removed easily.
Special care for floors
Floor may absorb moisture from atmosphere and hence you may feel a little chilled while walking through your interior. Cleaning the floors by adding a little kerosene can solve this problem easily. During rainy season, floor may get wet easily. So clean your floors with dry cloth in case you feel wet, to avoid accidental falls. Extra care should be taken if small kids or senior persons are present at home. In the case of wooden flooring, you should closely examine to know if gets moisture attack. If happen so, wood may budge out causing irregularities. To avoid this, protect your wooden floor through waxing.
To prevent leakages
Drainages and roofs should be cleaned periodically, also the sunshades. If passages to rain water are blocked by dried leaves or dirt, it may directly affect your roof resulting in leakages. Cut of those tree branches on the top of your roofs before rainy season.
To get rid of crickets
Crickets are seen in moisture and leakages. So, examine regularly if any part of your home, including closed shelves (particularly lower berths) show signs of pest attack. Powder a little camphor and mix it with liquid paraffin and apply on those affected places to get rid of crickets.
Maintenance work before monsoon
I have given a few measures to get rid of moisture attack of your interior. Now let me define the real monsoon-problems. Now leakage is common even in concrete buildings constructed most recently. So, house needs proper maintenance too, to stay durable for long. Soul of homes are similar to that of humans and like humans, they may also get diseases. So they need vaccinations and medicines at right time. Otherwise it may affect the longevity of your home. As soon as it shows symptoms of problems, cure it well to give protection.
Special care of roof during concrete
As soon as your home construction process is complete prepare a maintenance chart. You should draw a close circuit through which wires and pipes of your house are going. Also, note the places where you have kept maintenance materials. Doing so, maintenance work is easy in future. Otherwise you need to seek the electrician’s help each time you need a repair. Monsoon creates problems for roof in the form of leakages. To avoid this villain you need to take care from construction stage itself. While concreting never compromise with measures of cement, sand and iron used. You can add water-proof mixture also, along with concrete. It’s possible to do water proofing in already constructed homes. After using primer water proofing can be done in 1.5 to 2 mm thickness. Acryline and cement are the main ingredients of waterproofs. As I have said earlier, clean your terrace well before monsoon; also your drainages. By doing this, you can block leakage up to a limit. It’s better to use pipes with good surface area to drain water from terrace.
If your roof has leakage
Mark those places where you have doubts of leakage. You can’t 100% assure that those wet areas are the real sources of cracks; they may be just visible outside. In most cases, the pore through which water comes outside is misunderstood to be the affected areas. If repairing is not done sourcing the correct destination, it adds your expenses only without getting any results. In most cases the leakage may be due to the leakage of sanitary pipes inside the walls or water pipes going through roof slabs. In rare cases, electric wires may be budging out and water gets inside through those spaces. Sunshades without edges may also lead to leakage through windows. This problem can be solved by constructing or fixing edges of sunshades.
Solutions are many
If leakage is not severe there are many solutions. The doubtful area and surrounding spaces can be scratched a little using some sharp weapon and take cement out. Now clean it well and cover the places using cement slurry. Another solution - Clean those doubtful places and pour cement slurry. Then apply one or two layers of chicken mesh or cement mortar in the ratio 1:4 or 1:5. Both these ways help to prevent small leakages. You need to water those areas for at least 3 days to make the concrete strong. Now many products are available in market too. Applying white cement once in every year or plastering the roof once in four years are other solutions. You can use aluminum sheet roofs to protect your concrete from heat and rain. It reduces the temperature inside your home considerably.
Tress work as an umbrella
Now it’s the age of houses with umbrellas. Now global warming and leakage problems during rainy season ask everyone to do tress work to protect their homes. Earlier leakage problems were only for homes 25 years old. Now even most recently constructed homes show signs of leakage; it may be due to change of quality of materials available in the market the recent times. Water proofing is a nice solution to leakage. Yet if your problem is not solved you can construct another roof above this one as solution. In normal cases tress work is done on terrace and then given tiles or sheet. This technique can be done only if you have flat terrace. Tress frame can be done using GI, steel or wood. Then sheets or tiles are fixed as roof. Tress consists of triangular shapes called cords and straight units to connect them. Cross code provided by bars to fix sheets or tiles is also a part of tress work.
Tress work can be constructed in different models
Pitched tress in the form of triangles and flat tress in the form of rectangles are the most common models available. Structural stability is higher for triangular tress, hence more strong and durable. Aluminum, galvalume and GI are the metal sheets available for tress work. Traditional roof slates made of clay is also used. But it’s a bit expensive. When you buy metallic sheets, choose less-weight and rust resistant ones. Sheets are now available in different sizes and colours. Starting prize of aluminum sheet is 220 rupees per square feet while it’s 25 for GI and 28 for galvalume. For clay tiles, it’s available in wide price range – from 5 rupees to 250. It’s available in different colour shades too. But they are heavy too. The place below the tress work can be used as storage space, study area or recreation space. You can arrange utility room also, by placing washing machine here. Enough space is available for drying clothes too, most helpful during monsoon. You can protect your home from leaks also, during the rainy season.
A few rain tips to preserve your home well
Now before I conclude let me provide a few tips and precautions that can help you to preserve your home and materials from rain attack.
- Close all your doors and windows before rain. But open them when sun is shining. It helps you to avoid fungus on wooden materials due to moisture.
- If you do wax polishing in your furniture you can protect them from fungus.
- Cloth dipped in vinegar is best to remove fungus from window frames.
- Clean terrace of concrete buildings at regular intervals to avoid leakages.
- Never use wet cloth to clean furniture. Dry cotton is sufficient.
- Use newspapers inside shelves and spread cotton on top. Then you can place your books, clothes or anything. It helps to absorb moisture. In kitchen also you should put a few newspapers in shelves before you place dishes and other utensils.
- Rainy season is the season of house flies too. Add a little vinegar to the water used for cleaning dining table. Kerosene is best for cleaning floors. Add a little to the water before you use it. It is the best solution to remove moisture from floors too.
- In cemented areas of bathroom, more chances are there for fungal and similar attacks during rainy season. Sprinkle a little bleaching powder on those areas. Next morning use a scrubber to clean the surface well.
- Enlarge the holes at the beginning and end position of drainage area. It helps easy passage of water and dirt particles. It avoids blockage of drains too.
- Bleach liquors are best to remove dark spots on clothes caused due to moisture. But if clothes not cleaned properly it will damage your clothes.
- To remove rust stain from your clothes you can use oxalic acid crystal available in medical shops. Apply a little oxalic acid to your moist cloth and rinse it thoroughly after half an hour.
- Earthen pots used in kitchen may get fungal attack easily during rainy season. To prevent it, apply a coat of oil on its surface.
- Synthetic dress is best for rainy season. They can be washed and dried easily. Avoid leather bags and shoes during rainy season.
- Switch off all your electric appliances with the first thunder and lightning. Remove the plugs too.
- Never cover your music system and television during rainy season. In case you have to do so, clean the cover using dry cloth.
- It’s better to take books and papers out of shelves once in a week during rainy season.
- Special care is needed for things placed in the lowest shelf of your cupboard. As they have close contact with floor, moisture of floor can attack them directly. Never neglect those drawers. Give them proper attention at least once in every month, particularly during rainy season.
Like it on Facebook, Tweet it or share this article on other bookmarking websites.