Preparing Your Bathroom and Outdoor Tiles for Winter in Melbourne

Why winter is worth planning for

Melbourne's winters bring a good run of wet weather, and that's when small gaps and cracks in tiled areas start causing real problems. Essendon has plenty of older homes with original porches and bathrooms that have had a few decades of wear, and the cooler, wetter months tend to expose whatever's already been slowly failing.

Indoors: bathrooms, laundries and showers

Grout and silicone that's been fine all summer can start letting water through once the house is damper and showers run longer and more often. A few things worth checking before winter:

• Silicone joints around the shower and bath. If it's cracked, gone black with mould, or pulled away from the tile, water can track behind it over winter. Redoing the silicone now is a straightforward job.

• Grout lines on the shower floor. Worn or missing grout lets water sit against the substrate instead of running to the waste.

• Any hollow-sounding tiles. Tap a few tiles in the shower recess. A dull sound means the fixing underneath has likely failed, which is worth sorting before the wetter months put more water through that spot.

Outdoors: porches and alfresco areas

A lot of the Edwardian and Californian bungalow homes around Essendon still have their original patterned porch tiles, and these take a battering over winter. Cracked or lifting tiles let water get underneath, and repeated freezing isn't the issue here so much as the tiles staying wet for days at a time, which works moisture further into any existing cracks.

If a porch tile has lifted or cracked, it's worth having it looked at before the heavy rain starts rather than after. Matching old patterned tiles gets harder the longer a crack is left, since replacement stock can be tricky to find for older ranges.

What to do now

Before the wet weather properly sets in, it's worth a walk around the house:

• Check silicone in all wet areas for cracking or mould

• Tap a few shower tiles to listen for hollow spots

• Look over any porch or outdoor tiles for lifting or cracked sections

• Note any grout that's gone soft, crumbly or missing

If anything turns up, getting it looked at before winter properly sets in means less water finds its way into places it shouldn't. Callum and Joel work across Essendon, Moonee Ponds, Ascot Vale and the surrounding suburbs and can tell you what's a quick fix and what needs a closer look.