Unhaunt your house with these simple maintenance tasks

As Halloween approaches, Fair Fix, the boiler engineer experts, have revealed some of the most common problems within the home that could well have you thinking your house is haunted, from bumps in the night, chilling whistling sounds and toilets flushing on their own.

Things going bump in the night?

Doors that open or close by themselves
There’s nothing scarier than a door mysteriously opening or closing on its own. However, the reality is you probably have a through-draft somewhere in the home playing games on your ill-fitting doors and your mind.

If your doors aren’t closing securely, it could also be a result of humidity expanding the wood, making it slightly too big for the frame. A good humidifier should solve the issues, and cost roughly £40.

A noisy water heater
Plagued by the sound of popping and clicking noises all day and all night? Water heaters make unusual sounds when they’ve not been flushed properly. Flushing the heater can be a simple job if you know what you’re doing. But when it comes to messing around with the heating system, it’s always best to bring in an expert. A quality, professional fix should cost an average of £100.

Knocking and banging pipes in home
Do you hear that eerie knocking from down the hall? Perhaps a ghoul is causing mischief, or perhaps it’s vibrating water pipes, also known as hydraulic shock, or the “water hammer”. If the noise gets louder over time, you need to get it checked out because if left unattended, the vibrations could actually cause a rupture in the pipes. That’s a far scarier reality than a potential poltergeist and calling in a plumber to sort the problem should only cost around £50 per hour if you’re proactive rather than reactive.

Whistles and hisses

Hissing radiators
When radiators have too much water in them, they hiss. And it’s often a balancing issue, which means radiators close to your boiler aren’t properly balanced with the ones further away. Call a plumber to check it out, for which you’ll pay about £50 per hour.

Whistling windows
Are high winds bringing a dreadful whistling into the home? It’s likely that your windows aren’t properly sealed and that wind is passing through small gaps. To reseal windows, you’re going to need to spend around £153 including the callout charge.

Scratching and scraping

If you can hear a skin crawling scratching sound in the walls, or a rustling in the gutters, you might have a pest issue. Mice or even squirrels could be living in your walls, nibbling, gnawing and scratching their way around.

If there’s rustling in your gutters, it could well be birds or rats. There might even be a nest in there. If so, it’s important to get an expert in to get rid of any critters in the most humane way possible.

To solve both issues, a pest control expert charges an average of £230 per day, but it’s money well spent to silence the constant scraping and scurrying that’s keeping you awake at night.

The unexplained

When the toilet suddenly flushes all by itself, or the lights start flickering above your head, you could be forgiven for thinking something paranormal is taking place.

But before calling in the ghost hunters, it might be worth ruling out simple home maintenance issues.

If the toilet is ghost flushing, it’s likely that the tank flapper is no longer creating a watertight seal with the flush valve, thus triggering random flushes. If so, an expert will charge around £100 to fix it.

As for flickering lights, you could be dealing with electrical surges or connection issues. Hiring a qualified electrician is essential. They’ll charge you up to £60 per hour, but they’ll ensure all of your electrics are safe and functioning properly. Any attempt to fix it yourself could result in a very nasty shock.

Founder of Fair Fix, Tyrone Ekrem, commented:

“If you live in an older property that hasn’t been properly maintained for years, the chances are you’re subjected to a cacophony or eerie noises and events that you can’t quite explain. With the evenings drawing in and Halloween on the horizon, they can seem particularly scary, but the good news is that there is probably a perfectly normal explanation.

So if you’re sick of living with a heightened degree of paranormal activity, you’re probably better off calling a professional tradesperson rather than the Ghostbusters.

Hiring qualified maintenance and repair experts can be easy and affordable nowadays, just so long as you’re looking in the right places. Always do your research and get a number of quotes to make sure the prices you’re being quoted are fair and before you know it, you’ll be living ghost free.”