Homeownership comes with both rewards and heavy responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities lead back to rewards if done correctly. Specifically, preventive maintenance on your home helps retain your home’s value. Here are some preventive maintenance tasks you should do, when you should do them, and the monetary value that results later on.
Roof and Eavestroughs
Your roof protects everything under it, including the foundation of your house. It keeps wind, rain, hail, snow, and ice from collecting inside the house and damaging it. Roof maintenance tasks include clearing and cleaning gutters (eavestroughs), cleaning shingles, removing tree limbs, leaves, and other debris to prevent rot, and fixing, repairing, and/or replacing sections of the roof if they peel up or begin to leak.
The gutters should be cleaned twice a year unless you get special gutter covers installed. Then you don’t need to clean them. The gutter covers stop debris from collecting and rotting in the gutters, a problem that can cause rot to begin under the eaves and spread to your attic and ceilings on the second floor. Older people or people who can’t climb ladders to clean the gutters are often willing to pay more for a house that is low-maintenance with features like gutter covers.
Draining the Water Heater Annually
A lot of homeowners don’t realize that a water heater has to be emptied and drained annually. Doing so helps remove a lot of mineral sediment and rust that collects at the bottom of the water heater. Some of the sediment can end up in your pipes and create more plumbing problems throughout the house.
You can extend the life of the plumbing and of the water heater itself by simply turning a valve at the bottom of the water heater and letting it drain completely once a year. Plumbing and a water heater that are in excellent condition help retain your home’s value because they will not need to be replaced by the buyer for some time.
HVAC Maintenance
Maintaining your ventilation heating and cooling is essential to retaining your home’s value. Outdated or worn-out systems will drive down a home’s selling price. A bit of routine maintenance such as regularly replacing filters and having a system inspection every year will ensure that your HVAC system will keep running well and have a long life.
Checking and Maintaining the Electrical System
Electrical fires occur because homeowners don’t realize that there are bare wires and live wires in places where it is dangerous to have these wires (e.g., the attic, in the walls, etc.). Have an electrician check your electrical system every couple of years, and make any electrical repairs. Updating the electrical work in your home to accommodate smaller appliances and lights while decreasing the chance of an electrical fire is always smart. It ensures personal safety for owners for years to come and increases the value because there is enough electricity to support everything electrical in the home.
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