Preparing Your Home for the Monsoon

With the onslaught of the monsoon, here are some tips to prepare your house and ensure that it is a comfortable place to live in.

As rain drops keep falling on our heads”, it is time to take measures to ensure that our houses are not only weatherproof but are also well equipped and decorated to keep us warm and dry during the monsoon.

Making it more liveable

Colours:

On a chilly time period, it’s ideal that your home is decorated in bright colours to enliven your mood. Reserve blue and green colours for the summer heat. The monsoon involves lively bright and warm colours like yellows and oranges to decorate up your rooms. Ideally dark colours should be avoided because the skies are generally overcast and you would like whatever light that enters your house to be maximised by light colours and other reflective surfaces. At an equivalent time, avoid Very light colours like white and beige. These are colours which are very difficult to stay clean during a muddy monsoon.

Reduce the amount of greenery inside the house. In fact, with the onslaught of the monsoon, it’s the perfect time to stay your plants call at the rain to urge watered naturally. Plastic plants like green ferns are often replaced with colourful ones like plastic yellow sunflowers or orchids.

Carpet Care:

Roll away that expensive Persian carpet for the monsoon. Ensure that once rolled, the carpet is roofed during a plastic sheet. This will reduce the probabilities of moisture or accidental leakages damaging the carpet.

Invest during a bright, multi-coloured machine made acrylic washable carpet. These are light carpets and will dry faster than a Persian carpet if it gets wet. A more water-resistant option may be a carpet made out of PET fibres. These are polyethylene and terephthalate fibres, made from recycled plastics. These carpets might not be as plush or soft to the texture as other synthetic fibres but they’re very durable, water, static resistant, and offer extremely good value. They are also treated to be moisture and mildew resistant.

A cheaper alternative to the present would be an ornamental bamboo or coir mat.

Window Drapes:

Monsoon season is the time to have translucent window drapes. Invest in lace curtains or curtains without lining to make sure that the daylight passing through will bathe the space during a suffused glow. These curtains will allow sufficient amount of light to enter the room and at the same time provide the privacy that you seek.

Taking Precautions:

Storing important documents:

Water is a menace for books and important documents. Ideally, keep important documents such as your passport, driving licence, title deeds, etc. in a waterproof, zip-lock case or box. Ensure that you’ve got photocopies of this document similarly protected in another place within the house.

Stocking up:

If the rain is pouring down for days and therefore the streets are water-logged, you’ll not be ready to venture out of your house for a few time. Remember to stock up with enough food items and other basic necessities in advance to prepare for such circumstances. Another thing to ensure is that you have torch lights, emergency lamps, and extra fuel for generators, or a backup battery for your UPS.

Preparing for the rains:

Ensure that your house can withstand the onslaught of the rain. Fill up any minute cracks with plaster of paris or white cement until more professional restoration work are often undertaken. Fill gaps between sliding windows with rubber lining to keep water from seeping through on a windy, rainy day. If you have metal surfaces that you suspect could get rusty, treat them with a waterproofing spray.

See also: Tips for the buying gram panchayat land

Care should be taken to prep the surface of the house also if you’re not living during a flat. Ensure that the drains and culverts around the house are not clogged. Rake leaves regularly and eliminate them to make sure that rain water won’t drag them into the system. Cut down branches that you feel are likely to fall in a rain. Ensure that the water drains on your roof are working well; otherwise water may stagnate on the roof and start seeping through the ceiling and walls.

Ensure that you designate a neighborhood to dry off wet umbrellas and raincoats. Somewhere on the brink of the front door is right, as you’d have guests coming in with their wet raingear. Remember to keep a good waterproof doormat in front of your house so that people can reduce the amount of mud that they might unintentionally bring in.