238 articles were written over ten years from 2010-2020 by the Sun City Woodchucks woodworking club to help residents do maintenance to keep their homes working smoothly and avoid costly failures. These articles are all on the Sun Day website.
As houses age, some of the original equipment, even some of the replaced equipment, is no longer safe to use. While talking to neighbors, I am surprised at how much needed maintenance is not being done. Every few months we plan remind readers of things they need to do.
Below are five home maintenance chores that if you donât do could cost you many thousands of dollars.
Smoke alarms have a useful life of 7-10 years. If you have already replaced your homeâs original smoke alarms, it is probably time to replace them again. You cannot test them by pressing the button. That only tests the buzzer. It does not test if it senses smoke. If you should have a fire in your house with expired smoke alarms, they may not buzz to wake you up.
You should pick a day each year to change all your smoke alarm batteries. They are usually 9 volts. New Yearâs Day is a good choice, but any day is OK.
If you have black rubber water hoses on your washing machine you should change them this week. These hoses carry full line pressure of about 70 pounds per square inch. As they age, they get brittle and can easily burst. When this happens, it is like you turned on a garden hose full blast in your laundry room. This can easily do tens of thousands of dollars of damage to your house. The solution is to replace those rubber hoses with braided stainless-steel hoses for about $25. Donât be afraid to ask your neighbor for help installing them if you canât loosen the old ones or if you canât get the new ones tight.
The biggest cause of furnace failures is neglecting to change the furnace filters often enough. There are several types of filters, but the most common are one-inch-thick fiberglass filters. If you have this type of filter, you should buy 12 filters at the beginning of each year. At the beginning of each month pull out the old filter and insert a new one. This may be a slight over-kill but it will allow for an âI forgotâ once in a while.
If you have a basement and your sump pump is ten to fifteen years old, you could save a messy failure by changing it. These pumps seldom give any warning before they stop working.
This spring has been quite wet, which provides perfect conditions to grow moss, mold, mildew, algae, and stains on your house siding. These unsightly stains are quite easy to remove with a product called Wet and Forget. You simply mix it with water in a small garden sprayer. Pump up the sprayer and spray a stream on the stains. You can treat one whole side of your house in 10-15 minutes. It does not clean the siding quickly, but over the next one to two months your siding will return to like new condition as rain on the Wet and Forget washes your siding.
