There are certain precautionary steps you should take before carrying out renovations on your home. Continue reading to find out what these steps are.

Replace any damaged safety valves on your hot water heater

Before you attempt to perform any type of renovation work, you should examine the condition of the safety valves on your home's hot water heater. If they have deteriorated, you should replace them before the renovations begin. These types of valves are sold both online and in DIY shops. Bailey valves, for example, are readily available in most hardware chains.

The reason you should replace these deteriorated components is that these valves play an important role in ensuring that the pressure levels in your water heater do not climb dangerously high and cause the heater to either leak or explode. If these valves are in poor condition and you do not replace them with, for instance, the aforementioned ones made by Bailey prior to the start of your renovations, there could be disastrous consequences.

If, for example, you lay new carpeting or re-plaster the walls in the area next to the heater and the heater in question explodes or leaks as a result of its damaged valves, the water that emerges from the tank could destroy both the plaster and the flooring.

This would then leave you in a position where you may have to perform renovations on these damaged areas a second time.

Talk to your neighbours if you share a wall

If you live in a semi-detached property and you, therefore, share a wall with your neighbour, then it is important to pay them a visit before you start renovating.

This is because if your homes share a wall, then your neighbours will be more affected by your renovations than those living in other, detached properties nearby. As such, it is important to talk openly with them about what they should expect during the renovations, as well as what you can do to minimise the level of disruption this process causes to their lives.

For example, you may want to come up with a renovation work schedule that will suit you and your contractor and will also accommodate your neighbours' reasonable requests. For instance, if they work night shifts and need to sleep through most of the morning, you might want to offer to do the loudest renovation tasks in the early afternoon, so that they won't be woken up.