Home Maintenance Checklist by Month (UK, Printable) — Older Houses Included

A maintenance calendar only works if it matches the building you own. Service the boiler, clear the gutters, test the alarms — fine for a 2005 estate house with cavity walls and plastic drainage. Put it on an 1890s terrace and it misses the jobs that cost real money: the airbrick buried by a flowerbed, the cast-iron hopper discharging down a solid wall, the sash cord about to part.

Below is a month-by-month schedule with honest times and 2026 UK prices for a three-bed semi or terrace, plus the extra task an older house needs each month. The last section says which four you cannot skip.

Pre-1919 housing is not newer housing that has aged. It runs on different physics: solid walls that get wet and dry again, lime that flexes, floors that breathe from underneath. Modern instincts — seal it, paint it with plastic, repoint in cement — do more harm than neglect. Start with the common problems in 100-year-old houses.

• •Solid 9in brick absorbs driving rain and releases it inwards over days. It has to dry, so never seal it with waterproofer or vinyl emulsion.
• •Lime mortar and plaster are deliberately soft. Cement pointing traps moisture behind the brick face and blows it off in frost; NHL 3.5 repointing runs £60–£100 per m².
• •Lath and plaster ceilings fail by nail sickness — the keys snap and the ceiling bulges well before it drops. Tap for hollowness twice a year.
• •Victorian drainage is salt-glazed clay in short sockets, often shared with next door. Root ingress and displaced joints, not fat, cause most blockages.
• •Pre-1970s wiring may be rubber or lead-sheathed with no earth on lighting circuits. An EICR every ten years, five if let, is the proper check.

This is when defects announce themselves — damp on the north elevation, drains backing up after storms, heating faults at the worst moment. Keep January and February diagnostic.

• •January — 45 minutes, £0: walk the house during heavy rain with a torch, noting damp patches, overflowing hoppers and water running down brickwork. Older house: clear every airbrick — a blocked subfloor vent rots joist ends within a few winters.
• •February — 1 hour, £0–£20: bleed radiators and check the boiler sits at 1.0–1.5 bar cold; the order is in bleeding radiators and re-pressurising the boiler. Older house: lift a board in the coldest room and look for damp timber or white fungal strands.
• •March — 2 hours, £0–£40: clear gutters, hoppers and downpipes now leaf fall has finished — see gutter cleaning and maintenance. Older house: cast-iron guttering needs repainting inside with bituminous paint every three to five years.
• •April — 2–3 hours, £15–£60: wash down external joinery, check putty lines, prime bare timber before it swells. Older house: linseed oil putty on sash bars, never silicone; overhaul one or two windows a year, not a whole elevation.

British weather gives roughly four months in which masonry, timber and render properly dry. Paint wants surface temperatures above 8–10°C and no rain for six to eight hours; lime wants frost-free nights for weeks after.

• •May — 2 hours, £0: service the mower, check the outside tap, and cut back anything growing against a solid wall. Ivy and stacked bin stores keep brickwork permanently saturated.
• •June — half a day, £30–£120: two coats on windows, doors, fascias and bargeboards. Older house: breathable mineral or linseed paint over lime render, because modern masonry paint traps water and lifts off in sheets.
• •July — 1–2 hours, £0: roof check from the ground with binoculars — slipped slates, cracked mortar verges, daylight through the loft boarding. Older house: a nail-sick slate roof at 100 years fails as scattered slips, not one leak.
• •August — 2 hours, £0–£150: rod and flush the drains before autumn; lift the chamber lid, check the benching, run a hose through. Older house: repeated backing-up on Victorian clay warrants a £120–£250 CCTV survey, not three call-outs.

From late September you are working against the clock. Mortar, paint and excavation get harder every week, and the trades book further out.

• •September — 1–2 hours, £80–£120: book the boiler service now; Gas Safe engineers are three weeks out by mid-November. Older house: sweep every working flue at £60–£90 and cap unused chimneys with a vented cowl, never sealed dead.
• •October — 2–3 hours, £20–£80: brush strips, chimney balloons, letterplate flaps and floorboard filler, as covered in draught-proofing your home. Older house: sashes need brush carriers routed into the beads, £150–£250 per window fitted — foam tape just stops them sliding.
• •November — 1 hour, £10–£40: lag exposed pipework in the loft, garage and outbuildings, and turn the internal stopcock fully off and on so it can't seize; preventing frozen pipes covers the thresholds.
• •December — 30 minutes, £0–£30: test smoke and CO alarms, replace batteries, watch condensation on the coldest windows. Streaming glass and black spotting is a ventilation problem, not a cleaning one.

Rough 2026 figures for a three-bed semi — DIY where sensible, trade rates where not. Older properties run 20–40% higher across a year, mostly because more of the work is specialist. For the yearly provision, see our annual home maintenance cost guide.

• •Boiler service, Gas Safe registered: 45–60 minutes, £80–£120. Never a DIY job.
• •Chimney sweep, NACS or HETAS registered: £60–£90 per flue, with a certificate.
• •Drain rodding: 1 hour DIY with a £25 rod set, or £80–£150 for a call-out.
• •EICR on pre-1970s wiring: £150–£300, plus C2 remedials and a follow-up quote.
• •Sash overhaul with draught-proofing: £150–£250 a window, £400–£700 with cords and rot splices.

No workshop required — this kit covers everything above bar the trade-only jobs.

• •A 3m EN 131 double ladder and stand-off — never rest one on cast-iron guttering.
• •Radiator key, filling loop and 10mm spanner, bagged together near the boiler.
• •Ten-piece drain rod set with corkscrew head, plus long gauntlets.
• •Moisture meter, £25–£40, to tell condensation from a real leak.
• •Linseed oil putty, hacking knife and a 50mm cutting-in brush.
• •NHL 3.5 lime, sharp sand and a pointing iron.

Manage only four things a year? Make them these — each prevents a four- or five-figure failure.

The rest can slip a season. Repointing, decorating and window overhauls are worth doing slowly — one elevation or two windows a year — not all at once because a surveyor forced the issue mid-sale.

• •Clear gutters and hopper heads, twice if you have trees. Water discharging onto a solid wall is the commonest cause of internal damp in older UK homes.
• •Service the boiler and sweep the flues. Carbon monoxide and a Christmas Eve breakdown are the two risks worth paying to remove.
• •Keep airbricks and subfloor vents clear. Blocked ventilation rots joist ends and invites dry rot — a £15,000 problem starting with ten minutes and a trowel.
• •Walk the house in heavy rain with a torch. Fifteen minutes in bad weather finds more than a survey on a dry day.