Fall— it’s the best season 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 Woodlands 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. Because of this, changing the air filters in your rental home is an important part of seasonal maintenance. As the winter months draw near, residents would want to stay indoors more. That means they’ll let furnaces work harder to keep out the cold. This is the reason why making sure your filters are clean is important. 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 be thinking that this would be a good thing to delegate to your tenants, that may not be such a good idea. The chances that they’re going to forget or not change the filters often enough are high. 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 is also the best season to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. These devices need to be kept working correctly to make sure your tenants won’t be in danger. Think about it; let’s say a fire damages your property and hurts one of your tenants. Then it turns out your smoke detectors weren’t functioning because the batteries were running low and weren’t replaced. What do you think will happen? You’ll probably be sued— that’s pretty much guaranteed to happen. In other words, it really is critical that these devices be maintained and kept running properly.
There are different kinds of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Some have lithium batteries that can last up to ten years— which is ideal since that is also the useful life of a smoke or carbon monoxide detector—while others need to have their batteries changed every six to twelve months. However, no matter what kind of battery your devices have, you must have them tested on a regular basis. And the batteries must also be replaced without delay when it’s necessary. Hundreds of people are injured or killed in house fires every year. This is partly caused by the smoke detectors in their homes failing to alert them in time. If you let this task fall into the hands of your tenants, how sure are you that they would do it and do it every time? Instead, they may damage your property’s smoke detectors as they try their hand in testing and checking them. This would just give you additional expenses in replacement costs and increase your liability.
Then we have water heaters. They are often forgotten when doing property maintenance tasks even though they are one of the most frequently used devices in a rental home. Your rental property’s water heater must not be neglected. It should be cleaned regularly to keep it working efficiently for many years. 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 easily avoid these problems by flushing your water heater once every six months or so. It may take a while to get it done, but it’s important to still do it. It’s how you can get the most out of your expensive water heater unit. This may also be a task you’d normally want your tenants to do themselves. But the truth is that they might not do a good job. There really is no guarantee that they will clean out the water heater properly and may just end up causing more harm than good.
Neglecting these maintenance items can have serious consequences and you may end up with expensive repairs. But requesting that your tenant change or clean the filters, batteries, and water heater in your The Woodlands rental property is not the best option. While it may be the case that you can do all these property maintenance tasks yourself, it would mean you’d have to spend so much of your own time and effort. The smart option would still be to hire a company like Real Property Management Republic, and they can do all the work for you. 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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