Maintenance
Periodic maintenance also falls under the general class of home repairs. These are inspections, adjustments, cleanings, or replacements that should be done regularly to ensure proper functioning of all the systems in a house, and to avoid costly emergencies. Examples include annual testing and adjustment of alarm systems, central heating or cooling systems (electrodes, thermocouples, and fuel filters), replacement of water treatment components or air-handling filters, purging of heating radiators and water tanks, defrosting a freezer, vacuuming refrigerator coils, refilling dry floor-drain traps with water, cleaning out rain gutters, downspouts and drains, touching up worn house paint and weather seals, and cleaning accumulated creosote out of chimney flues, which may be best left to a chimney sweep.
Examples of less frequent home maintenance that should be regularly forecast and budgeted include repainting or staining outdoor wood or metal, repainting masonry, waterproofing masonry, cleaning out septic systems, replacing sacrificial electrodes in water heaters, replacing old washing machine hoses (preferably with stainless steel hoses less likely to burst and cause a flood), and other home improvements such as replacement of obsolete or aging systems with limited useful lifetimes (water heaters, wood stoves, pumps, and asphaltic or wooden roof shingles and siding.
Often on the bottom of people's to-do list is home maintenance chores, such as landscaping, window and gutter cleaning, power washing the siding and hard-scape, etc. However, these maintenance chores pay for themselves over time. Often, injury could occur when operating heavy machinery or when climbing on ladders or roofs around your home, so if an individual is not in the proper physical condition to accomplish these chores, then they should consult a professional. Lack of maintenance will cost more due to higher costs associated with repairs or replacements to be made later. It requires discipline and learning aptitude to repair and maintain the home in good condition, but it is a satisfying experience to perform even seemingly minor repairs.
Read more about this topic: Home Repair
Famous quotes containing the word maintenance:
“However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules his world. . . . The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“My course is a firm assertion and maintenance of the rights of the colored people of the South according to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, coupled with a readiness to recognize all Southern people, without regard to past political conduct, who will now go with me heartily and in good faith in support of these principles.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)