Overlooked home maintenance is a common problem because many homeowners can fail to pay attention to the uncommon aspects of home maintenance. Most homeowners are pretty good at taking care of the major things, but the little things that fall through the cracks are the hidden home dangers that can turn into major problems. Your home is important to you for many reasons, it’s a place for your family to live, and it’s also a major financial investment. This means that you need to do everything in your power to protect it, and that means paying attention to overlooked home maintenance problems.
Keeping The Chimney And Furnace Exhausts Clear
Why is it so important to keep your chimney and furnace exhausts clear? Among other things, having a dirty chimney or furnace exhaust is going to lower the quality of air in your home. This is especially problematic if you have anyone living in your home that has allergies, asthma, or any other type of chronic lung disease. This problem is increased more if your a family dog and they aren’t a hypoallergenic breed. These are also parts of your home that are regularly exposed to heat, such as your fireplaces open flame. Having a lot of build-up of anything in an area with heat or flame exposure is a fire risk.
Ensure Smoke And Carbon Monoxide Detectors Have Good Home Coverage
If you care about your family then you have to do everything in your power to protect them, and there are few simpler and more impactful things that you can do than having smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors are often mistaken as being interchangeable, but they aren’t. Each of these devices works in a specific way to protect you and your family while you sleep. If you want your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to do their job you need to ensure that there are several placed throughout your home. If you have a multi-story home, then you need to have at least one of each kind of detector on each story. Additionally the alarms should be the same brand and be linked to each other so that when one goes off they all go off. This will give you more time to respond to an emergency. You also need to ensure that they have good batteries because a smoke or carbon monoxide detector is useless if it isn’t turned on. Checking them once a month should be sufficient to prevent any lapses.
In addition to smoke and carbon detectors check out our Ring product line summary for other great tech that can help you feel more secure in your home.
Check For Water and Insect Damage Often
Water damage and insect damage are two things that can silently be causing a lot of damage to your home. In terms of insects, the number one culprit is obviously termites. There are usually signs that your home has a termite problem, such as weakened or warped baseboards, but you have to look for those signs if you hope to spot them before the problem becomes serious. Water damage is just as big of a threat, or perhaps an even bigger one than termites. Water damage can destroy the interior of your home, and it can lead to black mold; which can both damage your home and threaten the health of your family. Water can seep into a home if the gutters aren’t properly maintained or if your windows aren’t properly sealed. Water can also seep through basement cracks among other avenues. The best way to prevent water damage from becoming a major problem is to make regular home maintenance inspections a priority and to specifically look for water damage as a part of your rounds.
Keep Dust Clear On The Top Of Tall Furniture Items
Out of sight, out of mind. You’ve probably heard that saying, and it’s especially pertinent when it comes to tall furniture or other things in your home that is hard to reach. Just because you can’t see dust doesn’t mean that it isn’t there, so make it a point to dust the tops of anything in your home that you can’t see regularly. You can use a step stool, or you can buy a duster with an extendable wand.
To ensure your house is as thoroughly cleaned as possible also consider hiring a cleaning service to do a deep clean of your house a couple of times a year.
Avoid Grease Build-Up Near Stoves
There are few things that endanger a home or the family living in it more than fire and that’s why you need to take fire safety very seriously. Grease fires are particularly dangerous because they are very difficult to put out using normal methods. When you see fire the first thing that probably comes to mind is to douse it in water, but with a grease fire that won’t put it out, it will just make it spread more. This means that you need to do two things to protect against the threat of grease fires. First, make sure that you clean around your stove to prevent grease from building up which will make a pan grease fire even worse. When cleaning around your stove, pay particular attention to the cabinets above your stove as small amounts of grease evaporate upward each time you cook. This will go a long way to preventing a fire that happens while you’re cooking from spreading throughout your kitchen. Next, because accidents do happen, make sure that you keep a chemical fire extinguisher in your kitchen.
Make Sure Your Dryer Exhaust Is Clear Of Lint Yearly
Going back once again to the threat posed by fires, cleaning out your dryer lint exhaust annually is another bit of home maintenance that should never be overlooked. Every time you put a load of laundry into your dryer you clean out the lint filter, right? Well, here’s the thing, that lint filter doesn’t capture every bit of lint that is produced by a load of laundry in the dryer. A little of that lint escapes and is sent out through the dryer exhaust vent. Most of the lint that exits your home through this vent ends up outside, but a small amount of it clings to the walls of the vent. The lint trapped on the walls of your dryer vent is exposed to hot air each time you turn your dryer on, and if there’s enough lint it quickly becomes a serious fire hazard because of the high flammability of dryer lint.
Check Your Hot Water Quality Often If You Own A Tank Water Heater To Ensure It’s Clear Of Rust
Do you have a hot water heater tank? Gas or electric it doesn’t matter, all that matters is that you have a tank water heater. Why is this important? It’s important because water heaters don’t last forever and we learned this the hard way within a year of moving into our home. Given enough time every water heater will fail, and if it fails before you replace it that can be a major problem. It will flood the part of your home that contains the water heater, and if you aren’t home when it happens it could flood your entire house. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution, just keep an eye on your hot water. If it takes on a rusty or yellow brownish color, then it’s time to replace your water heater. Having your water heater drained and flushed periodically will also help to prevent problems, and it will extend the life of your water heater as well.
If you have an older water heater tank you can also consider buying a wi-fi enabled water sensor to put near your water heater that will alert your home if it detects any leaks.