How to Save Money on Summer House Maintenance During a Crisis?

During a crisis, everyone must think about saving on home and plot maintenance costs. We decided to explore how you can reduce expenses for summer house upkeep.

Save on Landscape Design

Professional landscaping is an expensive service. Designers often use capricious plants and create compositions that require constant care. To save money, plan your own project: how do you envision your garden in five years? Over time, you'll be able to realize your dreams.

Start by avoiding the purchase of large mature plants. Their prices are often inflated, and there's no guarantee they'll thrive on your plot. Prefer hardy young plants that are common in your region. They are more likely to adapt and quickly produce offspring.

By the way, it's not necessary to go to specialized markets. Try searching for plants on free ad websites and online flea markets. Gardeners often sell seedlings, seeds, and saplings there at lower prices.

Try Handmade Solutions

Who said pathways must be paved with bricks? Break free from stereotypes: they can be laid with wood cuts or filled with river pebbles. Use large stones to create a 'stone river'—a simple and beautiful way to decorate your garden. A bridge across it can also be built from readily available materials.

Garden furniture can easily be replaced with pallets, and children's swings can be made from a regular chair with cut legs suspended on strong ropes.

Conserve Water

Water is often wasted at summer houses. Irrigating the garden and lawn, washing the car, filling the pool, and household needs—all these can be optimized. Pay attention to the equipment you use. Choose quality hoses, pipes, watering cans, filters, and fittings; install several barrels to collect rainwater for irrigation.

For lawn and garden irrigation, use drip irrigation; water trees and shrubs precisely and install diffusers on taps to reduce water consumption. Also, check pipes for leaks after winter.

Save Electricity

Energy-saving bulbs are no longer surprising: they have long been used in homes where people don’t want to spend extra money on electricity.

If you're looking for overall savings, consider installing a solar collector—an alternative to solar panels. Unlike the latter, collectors do not generate electricity but heat the heat transfer fluid. For Moscow region, this is a more relevant technology than traditional solar panels, which may not work well in rainy summers. Collectors are usually used to heat water in homes. For example, a 2 square meter collector can heat about 100 liters of water daily with an 80% probability.

And Hot Water

Heating water and heating are among the biggest expenses on a summer house. Preventive measures include insulating hot water pipes and installing single-handle mixers. Also, using specially painted black barrels elevated for summer showers—water heats up quickly in them under the sun.