If you look at the different seasons of the year, fall would be the best one for you to perform regular maintenance on some of the hardest-working devices in your rental property. By using this season to do important maintenance items, you’re hitting two birds with one stone. You’re doing proper maintenance and you’re also priming your home to run safely and smoothly all winter long. Among the things you can do, you can have your filters, batteries, and water heaters checked and cleaned or replaced. These tasks must be done regularly to make sure your rental property stays in good condition and your tenants out of harm’s way.
Changing your Woodstock rental property’s air filters is very important, and it should be done on a regular basis. These filters keep your property’s HVAC system clean and running efficiently. This is the reason why changing air filters is an important part of seasonal maintenance. As the winter months draw near, less time is spent outdoors. Residents would stay indoors and furnaces would start to work harder to keep out the cold. This being the case, it’s clearly important that your filters must be kept clean. There are a variety of HVAC systems and they use different kinds of filters. Depending on what filter your particular system needs, you may need to change the filters as often as every 30 days, every three months, or even every six months. While you may want to let your tenants do this themselves— and some may be willing— there is a likely chance that they’re not going to change the filters often enough or just outright forget to do it. Not doing the maintenance tasks properly would strain your HVAC system and may result in the life of the unit being shortened and its efficiency greatly reduced.
Fall would also be the perfect time to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. You have to see to it that these devices are working well to make sure your tenants are kept safe. For example, if your smoke detectors aren’t functioning properly and one of your tenants gets hurt in a fire, you can be pretty certain that you’re getting sued. In other words, it’s critical that these devices are maintained properly.
Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors come with different kinds of batteries. Some batteries need to be changed every six to twelve months while others— those with lithium batteries— can last up to ten years, which is the useful life of a smoke or carbon monoxide detector. Even so, no matter what kind of battery your devices have, you should still have your batteries tested on a regular basis, and replaced right away when necessary. Hundreds of people are injured or killed in house fires every year. This is quite sad since many of these could have been prevented if the smoke detectors in their homes were functioning properly. If you let your tenants do this task, there is no certainty that they would carry them out. What would happen instead, is that your property’s smoke detectors may get damaged— especially if they haven’t been taught how to do proper maintenance. This means you would have additional costs to replace the devices and increased liability.
Next, let’s talk about water heaters. They are one of the most frequently used devices in a rental home but are also one of the most overlooked devices when doing property maintenance tasks. It should not be forgotten. Making sure your rental property’s water heater is routinely cleaned is an important part of keeping it working well. Over time, sediment builds up in the tank of a water heater, making it less efficient and even leading to clogged water lines.
You can steer clear of these problems easily by simply flushing your water heater once every six months or so. It may take a bit of time to do it but it really is important. You have to do it to get the most out of your expensive water heater unit. This may also be something you’d want to delegate to your tenants. But cleaning the water heater, when done improperly, may cause more problems. And you can’t really guarantee good execution when you leave it up to your tenants.
Neglecting these maintenance items can have serious consequences and you may have to pay additional costs for expensive repairs later on. But letting your tenant change or clean the filters, batteries, and water heater in your Woodstock rental property is not the best option. While it is true that you could do the jobs yourself, the best option is still to get a company like Real Property Management East Cobb to manage all the property maintenance you need to have done. We offer a full range of maintenance services that would keep your property in great condition. These services would also keep your tenants safe from harm. With us working by your side, you would be free to do the things that matter most for the growth of your real estate investing business. For more information, feel free to contact us today.
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