The Household Spring Cleaning & Maintenance You Should Do Today

house, home, home maintenance, spring clean, repairs

Now the clocks have gone forward it must be spring! And there’s something primal about the urge to spring clean and carry out home maintenance. You’ve had all winter to think about those jobs you want to do, but you know you need a few days of good weather to really get to grips with them. You might be itching to throw open the windows and get right into giving the carpet a good shampoo, or you might have been obsessing over the state of the paint around your windows, and you’re dreaming of the day you can peel it back, repair the putty, fill any holes and give it a thorough lick of weatherproof paint. (Hands up, I’m guilty of both of those! But a damp carpet AND paint fumes at the same time? I think I’ll be spreading those jobs out…)

This year spring cleaning, probably more than any in living memory for most of us, will be an almost visceral event. After a year of being mostly stuck indoors and worrying we’ll finally be able to get fresh air into the house, scrub the woodwork, dust all the nooks and crannies and clear our heads too. We call it ‘Spring Cleaning’ but there’s a lot of DIY maintenance and household DIY which you’ll want to get up to your elbows in as well. Read more

Why We Keep On Doing Our Work Maintaining TV Receivers & Data

You may be asking how come Briant Communications are still open for business while so many other businesses are on furlough or have shuttered for the duration. The simple answer is that we take our customers and clients health and safety very seriously, and as well as obeying all the government and scientists’ recommendations, we go above and beyond.

First of all much of our work is still considered vital. Life in the 21st century without TV, or broadband data wouldn’t just be dull, it would be almost unimaginable! We’ve come to depend so much on electronic technology that we would be lost without it. Lord Reith’s diktat for the BBC when it was established almost a century ago was for it to “inform, educate and entertain”. Imagine being in lockdown with a poor TV signal or no internet; how would you get your news, homeschool the kids, or keep them from getting bored staring at the same four walls. So that’s why we keep on doing what we do. Our offering is a vital public service. Read more

Briant Communications Offer Year Round Service, No Matter What!

TV television aerial satellite dish installation maintenance repair servicing safety covid coronavirusSussex, along with most of the rest of the country has been put into Tier 4 for Coronavirus protection and further lockdown instructions are being received all the time. Despite this, Briant Communications remains open for those who need television aerial antenna or satellite dish servicing and repairs.

It’s hard to imagine how we would have entertained or distracted ourselves, informed ourselves, or kept up with the kids’ education if we hadn’t had TV, or internet. Television is not only escapism, it’s a fast and timely way for us to consume news, receive information directly from Number Ten, SAGE and local authorities, while the internet allows us to investigate, help the children with their education, do the shopping if we’re not able to leave the house, and keep in touch with our families via social media. Read more

Preparing Your Home For Another Stormy Winter On The South Coast

poor aerial installationAs October draws on it’s a good time to think about preparing your home for the storms and snow that houses in the south east of England face this winter.

People who live on the south coast and along the South Downs will be more than familiar with the gales which can batter the region for days any time between October and April. We’re inured to it and laugh inwardly at those who are new to the area, who think that an umbrella will be of any consequence against weather which is coming in sideways.

But right now is the perfect time to prepare your house for winter, and all that it brings. Summer is a time when we’re all out enjoying the benefits of living in southern England, but now, as the nights draw in and the thermometer falls, it’s time to plan for the worst it has to offer.

Maintenance and Repairs

Autumn is the perfect time to carry out domestic repairs as the jobs which need doing reveal themselves. You won’t have noticed the rattling draughty windows during summer as they were all flung open to let the fresh air in, but now you’ve closed them you notice how much care they need. The same goes for many maintenance jobs.

Sash windows are prone to rattle and let in drafts. Wedges in the corners will hold them still and reduce a lot of the drafts, however, a draft excluder designed for small gaps inserted where the bottom and upper sash meet fill the equivalent of a two inch square home in every window in the house. Read more

If You Think Your Job Is Rubbish, Look What We Do!

Briant Communicationsfibre optic, repair, maintenance, industrial, don’t only provide data cabling and fibre optic cables for household users. We were recently called out to attend a large industrial site, UBB in Essex. Unfortunately it wasn’t a bakery or biscuit factory, no, just our luck it was a 6 acre waste treatment and recycling plant.

As part of the waste treatment process it is left to maturate for several weeks, meaning that the smell inside swimming pool sized tanks was, predictable. Unfortunately the grot which is left in food containers when they’re thrown into the average household recycling attracts a variety of wildlife, who grow big and plump off of all the scraps which are available. The creatures which cause the biggest problem for us when it comes to fibre optic data communication is rats. They make their homes in the undisturbed, secure spaces where cables and fibre optics are housed and channelled, gnawing trunking and sheaths. And it’s this activity which gives us our biggest headache as the damage to fibre optic cabling is a great deal harder to fix than simply reconnecting two ends of wire, as it would be with metal cable. Read more

Don’t Give Thieves An Early Christmas Gift

Christmas can be a high old time for burglars and thieves. The nights are dark and cold, you’re buying lots of treats ready for wrapping and giving to your friends and family, and you’re preparing to be out of the house for much of the time. It’s perfect for people planning no good. Not giving them the upper hand is simple though. A few common-sense precautions, one or two deterrents, and your home is safe and secure.

Don’t make your home a target. Many thieves operate at this time of year because the dark afternoons mean that they get to enjoy the best of both worlds: people are out at work, out shopping or walking the dog, but the houses in the neighbourhood are shrouded in darkness. There’s every chance they will have been in your area earlier that day to see if you’re home, checked your security measures and possibly taken a look through the window to see what they’re going to steal when they come back once night has fallen.

Most burglars are opportunist, and by no means professional. They cause thousands of pounds worth of damage stealing goods worth a few hundred that they will only get a few pounds for when they sell them on. They don’t plan beyond looking at the security precautions you’ve on display, they don’t have housebreaking skills or specialist tools, generally they will only spend about a minute trying to force their way in. If they’re successful they will spend 10-12 minutes inside and then leave. They don’t spend time looking carefully at the kinds of door locks you have, whether they can bypass the circuit, or any of that, if they can force their way in without making too much noise, grab what they want and get away again before the police are likely to arrive then your house is good enough for them. Read more