Tag Archive for: Maintenance Tips

Many of our customers ask for no maintenance homes. The thought of painting porch pickets, once a common way of life, is now grouped with root canals and tax returns on the list of things people enjoy the least.
The sad truth is that no building is truly no maintenance. The use of high quality, durable materials can greatly reduce the amount of maintenance required, but no home or structure is truly no maintenance. Sun, wind and rain wreak havoc on the exterior of our structures, and the normal activities of daily life take their toll on the interiors.

However, while no maintenance homes are as easy to build as bigfoot is to find, there are three simple tips and strategies for reducing your home maintenance, inside and out.

Maintenance strategy #1: Hire an HVAC contractor to perform maintenance on your heating and cooling system. A licensed and insured HVAC contractor should visit your home no less than twice a year to perform simple cleaning and diagnostics on your system. One visit should be in fall as you change from cooling to heating, and one visit should be in the spring, as you change from heating to cooling. Your HVAC system is one of the most expensive single components to your home comfort and efficiency. Simple maintenance will greatly reduce the cost of repairs and delay the cost of replacement.

Maintenance strategy #2: Clean your gutters (or hire someone to do it). The leaves that gather in your gutter each year can be unsightly, but clogged gutters can cause a whole host of other problems. The single most important thing you can do to your home is control the water that enters it. Clean gutters, and downspouts that direct water away from your foundation, prevent water, and the host of home problems that accompany water, from entering your home. Clean gutters direct water, snow and debris away from the structure of your home and give you a head start on a long and happy relationship with your home.

Maintenance strategy #3: Build right! If you you are among the fortunate folks who can build a new custom home or remodel your existing home, don’t cut corners on things like insulation and heating and cooling. Spending extra money on the core systems of your home that cannot be easily replaced in the future, will guarantee low maintenance costs over the life of your home, and will maximize your investment in your home. Your hours of enjoyment and peace of mind will offset your heartbreak over the busted myth of the no maintenance home.