March Home Maintenance Checklist: The Spring Ramp-Up Starts Now

March is when you find out what winter did to your house and get ahead of what summer is about to demand. The core list: clear the gutters and check the downspouts, test every outdoor faucet for freeze damage, book your AC tune-up before the first heat wave fills every technician's calendar, and use the clock change to reset your smoke detector batteries. Most tasks take under an hour.

Our spring maintenance guide covers the whole season. This page is what to do this month, roughly in order of urgency.

Walk the house and test what winter touched

Start outside with a 20-minute loop around the house, looking for what freeze-thaw cycles broke: slipped shingles, split siding, caulk pulled away from window frames, heaved concrete. Then test each outdoor hose bib. Turn it on, check for leaks at the handle and spout, and look for drips after you shut it off. A faucet that drips while closed often means a pipe froze and cracked behind the wall, and that leak will run quietly into your framing for months. If you're in zone 1, 2, or on the marine 3C/4C coasts, skip the faucet test — nothing froze, so there's nothing to check.

• Time: 30 minutes total. Cost: free to look; $75–200 for a plumber if a bib failed.
• Skip it and: a cracked pipe behind the wall leaks all summer, and you meet it later as mold and rotted framing instead of a $150 repair.

This walk is also where February's repair list turns into booked work. Contractors still have March openings; they won't have May ones.

Give the gutters their first pass of the year

Winter packs gutters with whatever fell after your last cleaning, plus grit shed from the shingles. Scoop them out, flush each run with a hose, and check for what ice does: sagging sections, bent brackets, seams pulled apart by frozen debris. Then walk the downspouts and confirm every one discharges 4–6 feet from the foundation; extensions get knocked loose by shovels and plows all winter.

• Time: 1–2 hours for gutters, 15 minutes for downspouts. Cost: $0–10 DIY; $100–250 for a pro cleaning; $5–20 for replacement extensions.
• Skip it and: spring rain overflows straight down the walls and pools at the foundation, which is how basements flood and why foundation repairs average $5,000–15,000.

Our gutter cleaning guide covers technique, guards, and what the debris tells you about your roof. In zones 5–6, wait until the gutters are actually ice-free; late March or early April is normal there.

Book the AC tune-up now, run it in April

The spring HVAC service itself (cleaning evaporator coils, clearing the condensate drain, lubricating the blower, checking refrigerant lines) can happen anytime before cooling season. The booking is the March task: calling now gets you a scheduled visit; calling in June gets you a two-week wait with no AC.

• Time: 2–3 hours for the visit. Cost: $100–200 for a professional tune-up; $20–50 if you handle the coil cleaning and drain line yourself.
• Skip it and: reduced cooling, higher bills, and a much better chance of a mid-July breakdown. A dirty coil that freezes over can take out the compressor, a $1,500–3,000 repair.

In zones 1–3, where cooling season is weeks away or already running, treat this as urgent. Our HVAC maintenance schedule covers the full year of filter changes and service intervals.

The 15-minute water damage check

Two quick indoor tasks, both aimed at the most common ways homes flood from the inside:

1. Inspect the washing machine hoses. Pull the machine forward and check both supply lines for bulges, cracks, or corroded fittings. Swap rubber hoses for braided stainless steel every five years regardless of appearance. Burst washer hoses are the most common source of residential water damage claims, and a failed one can dump over 500 gallons an hour. Time: 10 minutes. Cost: $15–40.
2. Exercise the main water shutoff valve. Find it, turn it fully closed and open twice, and make sure everyone in the house knows where it is. Time: 5 minutes. Cost: free.

The second task exists because of the first: when a hose lets go, the damage bill is set by how fast someone stops the water, and a valve that hasn't moved in a decade may not move at all.

Change the clocks, change the batteries

Daylight saving time lands on the second Sunday of March, the easiest anchor for two safety checks. Replace the batteries in every smoke detector, including hardwired units, where the battery is the backup during a power outage. Then check the fire extinguishers: seals intact, pressure gauge in the green, a quick shake to loosen compacted powder.

• Time: 20–25 minutes for both. Cost: $10–30 for batteries; $15–35 to recharge an extinguisher.
• Skip it and: a smoke detector with a dead battery is a plastic disc on the ceiling. Nearly 60% of home fire deaths happen in homes without working alarms.

Clean the dryer vent, not just the lint trap

Once a year, disconnect the dryer and brush out the full duct run to the exterior wall, then check that the outside flap opens freely and isn't blocked by a nest. Replace any plastic or foil duct sections with rigid metal; the flexible stuff traps lint and is a fire hazard.

• Time: 30–60 minutes. Cost: $0–30 for a brush kit; $100–200 for a professional cleaning of a long or complicated run.
• Skip it and: clogged vents cause about 2,900 dryer fires a year in the US, and a restricted duct roughly doubles energy use and makes every load take longer in the meantime. The tell that you're overdue: towels need two cycles, or the top of the dryer runs hot.

Get a termite inspection on the spring calendar

Termites swarm in spring, so March and April are when an annual professional inspection catches colonies at their most detectable. A licensed inspector checks for termites, carpenter ants, and rodent entry points; most home warranties want this documented yearly anyway.

• Time: 30–60 minutes. Cost: $75–200, professional only.
• Skip it and: by the time termite damage is visible, repairs typically start at $3,000–8,000. An inspection catches it while treatment is cheap.

Last call for tree trimming near the house

If branches hang within 10 feet of the roof or touch the siding, March is your last safe window for oaks: the beetles that spread oak wilt wake with the warm weather and carry the fungus straight to fresh pruning cuts, and there's no cure once it takes hold. Other species can wait, but dormant wood is easier to assess now.

• Time: 1–3 hours for what you can reach from the ground. Cost: $10–40 DIY; $200–800 for a crew on anything near the roofline.
• Skip it and: overhanging limbs feed your gutters, give squirrels and ants a bridge to the roof, and become the branch through the shingles in the first big spring storm.

Start the irrigation system, if your freezes are done

In zones 1–3 (and parts of 4), March is startup month. Open the supply valve slowly, then walk every zone watching for broken heads, geysers, and heads that spray the driveway instead of the lawn. One broken head can waste around 25,000 gallons over a season, visible on your water bill long before it shows as a brown patch. Time: 30–60 minutes; $10–30 for replacement heads, or $75–150 for a pro startup. If your municipality requires an annual backflow preventer test, that's a separate visit from a certified tester, typically $50–150. In zones 5 and colder, leave the system winterized: a March startup followed by an April hard freeze cracks pipes.

One more cold-climate note: if you skipped the sump pump test in February's checklist, do it first. In zones 5–6 the melt is arriving now, and the pump either works or your basement finds out.

Common questions

What's the single most important March task?

Gutters and downspouts, if you only do one thing. Spring brings the year's heaviest sustained rain, and every expensive failure downstream (wet basement, foundation settling, rotted fascia) starts with roof water that didn't get carried away.

Is March too early to service the air conditioner?

No, it's arguably the ideal month. The system should be serviced before its first real workout, and booking now means you choose the appointment instead of joining the June queue. In cold zones the visit itself may land in April, since some tune-up steps need mild outdoor temperatures.

My outdoor faucet drips even when it's off. How bad is that?

Treat it as urgent. A drip from a closed hose bib usually means the pipe froze and split inside the wall over winter, and it will leak into the wall cavity every time the faucet runs. A plumber's repair typically runs $75–200, cheap against months of hidden moisture.

Which of these your house actually needs depends on your climate zone and systems. SeasonKeep builds that month-by-month schedule from your zip code and home profile, free to start. When March's list is done, April's checklist carries the ramp-up into full spring.