By June, the coast settles into months of strong sun and high temperatures. For a home that sits empty for weeks at a time, that heat is one of the most overlooked risks of the year. Here are the things worth checking before the hottest stretch arrives.

Inside the house

Heat and humidity together are what cause problems, so the goal is to keep air moving and moisture down.

  • Leave blinds and shutters mostly closed on the sun-facing side to keep interior temperatures down and protect floors and furniture from fading.
  • Crack a couple of windows on opposite sides if the property is secure enough to allow it, or run air conditioning on a timer for an hour a day to stop air going stale.
  • Empty and prop open the fridge if no one will visit for a long period — a sealed, switched-off fridge in a hot house grows mould fast.
  • Check that drains have water in their traps. In dry heat, U-bends evaporate and let sewer smells back into the house. Running every tap and flushing every toilet solves it in minutes.

Outside

The garden and exterior take the brunt of the sun.

  • Set irrigation to early morning or after dark so water reaches the roots instead of evaporating, and check the timer is actually firing.
  • Look at the pool’s water level and balance. In peak summer a pool can lose noticeable water to evaporation each week, and unbalanced water turns green quickly in the heat.
  • Clear roof and terrace drains before the first summer storm — they arrive suddenly and drop a lot of water at once.

The things that fail when no one is watching

Most summer call-outs we see come down to three things: an air-conditioning unit that quietly stopped working, a pool that tipped over the edge between visits, and a small leak that had weeks to do damage before anyone noticed.

None of these are dramatic on their own. They become expensive only because no one was there to catch them early. That is the entire reason regular visits exist — a problem found in week one costs a fraction of the same problem found in week six.

If you would rather not think about any of this while you are away, that is exactly what we are here for. A Carefree Home visit runs through all of the above and sends you the photos to prove it.