[It doesn’t earn you something but it does save you a lot of time and money.]
Everyone wishes to live in a house that is comfortable and without any problem whatever the size and cost of it. And there are a number of ways to increase the value of your home.
Let’s first talk about the values that you can add by maintaining your home:
A Well-Functioning Home
If you flush a hot water heater you have hot water and eventually, you have hot showers and not cold showers. Same way, your maintenance activities make all the equipment and appliances functioning.
Maintenance has some excellent ‘by-products’ like getting some more space.
For instance, you do your research on staining your wooden deck and keep it functioning for regular use.
A Healthy Home
Cleaning the dirty air ducts doesn’t only ensure a steady circulation of air but also saves you from any health issues that occur from lack of clean air. Cleaning your old carpet does not only rid you of some dust but also keeps you free from any allergic respiratory problems.
Thus, cleaning various parts of your house keeps you from so many diseases and other sorts of health issues.
Here are some other causes that can make your home unhealthy. You may want to take a careful look at them:
- there may be a plumbing leak inside a wall
- leakage in a sink or ice machine
- leakage in the foundation into the basement
- damp or wet crawl space
- faulty sealing of air ducts
- inadequate or excessive air circulation
- sprinklers hitting wall sides
- air leakage in wall cavities
- evaporating chemicals from new furniture etc.
- evaporating chemicals from cleaning products and pesticides stored in the house
- Recent sewage backup or flooding
- the outdoor or indoor treatment for pesticide done regularly
- Dust suspending from remodeling or renovation
- Dump or moist parts of the building
A Safe Home
From the easiest instance like mosses grown on your wooden balcony to the blocked gas stove range hood causing accumulation of harmful fumes— there are a number of places that can pose a threat to your safety. They don’t only damage your home they can, at any time, cause damage to your family members.
Extend the life of Equipment and Appliances
You also want to extend the life of your equipment and appliances with regular home maintenance. Just like the health of your body your equipment and appliances also have some kind of health that needs to be equally taken care of. The more and longer we care for them the longer we have this life on this earth.
You may, therefore, want to make sure you do regular checks on your HVAC equipment just to make sure they last longer.
When you consistently and regularly manage that maintenance activity you actually reduce some extra repairing cost and save yourself some money. Replacing your equipment less frequently is a negative (or passive) adding of value.
This is just one aspect of it. The other area of your saving money is that when we are performing maintenance tasks on our equipment, for instance, cleaning out the vent dryer we actually do not overextend and tax our dryer. Because of the chocked-up vent you are forced to use the dryer longer in order to dry your clothes which means your average energy bill is going up and you have to write bigger monthly checks.
Thus, regular cleaning is helping you in two ways: extending the lifespan of the appliances and reducing your monthly costs.
Estimating the Value of Maintenance
There are some years when you need to do only some minor maintenance like cleaning gutters and changing furnace filters. Such types of maintenance do not exceed a few hundred dollars. Other years you may have to change your roof ($1000 or more) or paint the whole outer walls.
The average annual maintenance cost that people living in the United States of America bear is a bit over $3300, according to a report published from the US census.
Regular maintenance Checklist: A Shortlist
Let’s discuss the maintenance activities divided into some periods of time.
Monthly
- Get the kitchen sink disposal cleaned.
- Get the HVAC filters inspected, or changed.
- Take a close look at your fire extinguisher(s).
- Get the range hood filters cleaned.
Quarterly
- Ensure the smoke/carbon dioxide detectors are fully functional.
- Test the feature for auto-reverse of your garage door.
- Check if the water softener is functioning.
Biannually
- Test if the pressure relief valve of your water heater is working fine.
- Clean your entire house thoroughly.
- Get the batteries in carbon dioxide/smoke detectors replaced.
- Sometimes the refrigerator coils can get choked partially or fully. You need to vacuum clean it.
Planning for the Maintenance
Based on the above checklist you can very well plan your regular maintenance considering what you need in reality.
The best way, however, is doing it in small amounts at a time. For example, you can choose one room for a year and do thorough maintenance in and around the room. That would keep it within your manageable limit.
Tracking and Budgeting
Tracking the cost of all those tasks is another very important thing. It may be something simple that I can do myself and there are generally no costs at all and it’s just time that I have to manage such as schedule in my week or my month. But when there is an actual cost because I had to hire a contractor, I need to track those completed tasks and I have a running tally, year over a year over a year, of how much I have spent on maintenance so that I can budget for the next year.
Are Values all Economic?
What on earth have we been talking about only economic values for? More precious abstract values are added when you do regular maintenance. The clean and tidy look of your rooms, kitchen, and dining hall, the impressive color of the interior, or the lush green vegetation of your lawn and garden— all spontaneously express your uncompromising attitude towards beauty and smartness adding extra value to your sweet home.
Final Words
It’s not a big deal at all if you do yourself two favors about your maintenance— doing it regularly. The values your maintenance will add cannot actually be estimated but you can very well have a rough idea about it when you have a well-functioning, safe long-lasting home.