Getting the Barn Ready for the Winter
/
If you’ve got a barn on your hands, there’s a good chance you dedicate 50% of your life to keeping it in good nick. You’ve got animals in there that rely on you for everything, and you’ve got to keep all the tools in a tidy spot to make sure you’re never buying a new rake every other month! But there’s a little more work coming up for you this year.
Summer is waving us goodbye, the autumn is coming along swifty, with all its pumpkin spice and everything nice, and there’s a good chance your farmhouse is feeling a bit weathered. So now’s your best chance to get it ready for the winter, and all the rain and freezing temperatures that will bring - here’s a couple of the best tips for you to follow.
It’s a picturesque place right now, but come the snowy temperatures and it might just take a turn for the worst!
Get Pipes Insulated
You’re going to want a fresh and clean, and most importantly, unfrozen supply of water to keep your animals hydrated throughout the winter seasons. And because of this, you’re going to need to check on your pipe insulation, and most likely get some places repatched.
Making sure the water doesn’t freeze not only keeps your animals much healthier, but it means there’s less work for you to do next spring as well. Your pipes won’t have expanded and potentially burst, and you won’t have any blockages down there where the water was too frozen to flush anything out.
Make Sure There’s No Holes
Your structure could very well be the target or termites or wood rot, and sometimes you won’t even know about it. So this is your reminder to go out and check for signs of these, and to look in very specific places: around the door, in the ceiling and any beams holding it up, and around any window you’ve had installed. You’ve managed to patch up the back of the barn to make sure the foxes never get in, now it’s the weather’s turn to be kept away!
After all, these entry points that get affected most by weather and outside influences are going to be the weakest parts of the barn. Once you’ve found some suspect symptoms of a problem developing, or there are some very noticeable draughts when you stand near these points, be sure to look into companies such as Replacement Windows to help you out with a solution.
Have you got the barn all ready yet? Probably not, considering the amount of work there is still to do on the farm before the winter properly sets in. But making sure you’ve got some plans in the works before anything bad hits is the best way to prepare - you never know when a storm is going to keep you from leaving to restock, or when the roof might come in because of a blown down tree. This is your chance to set your animals up!
