How to Maintain Your New Home

New Home, New Maintenance Routines

One of the pleasures of buying a newly built home is the freedom from joyless tasks like scraping old paint from your windowsills. But just because renovations and repairs are not required, that doesn’t mean you’re entirely off the hook for making sure your new home stays in good condition.

To keep your brand new home looking fresh and operating at its optimal level of efficiency and safety, experts suggest you keep up with a handful of home maintenance tasks.

These home maintenance tasks are important. As the first owner of a home, there’s no better time to create good habits that will pay off down the road and ensure the full longevity of your house.

Getting Organized

When you do your final walkthrough, your builder may hand you a folder or binder that contains all of your appliance manuals and warranties bundled together. Once you have been given all of this information there’s no better time to get organized. Keep it in a safe spot for future reference, because you’ll need it when it comes to maintaining your home.

As a new homeowner, it’s also smart to have a plan and know how long the warranty is on everything in your home and to know what to expect in terms of the lifespan of each appliance. Not just the warranty from your builder, but everything in your home. You should also make sure you understand how everything in your home works.

To help you keep track of routine home maintenance tasks, there are plenty of apps available for you to download. This is a great way to keep track of all the maintenance tasks you need to complete to keep your home in its best shape.

Exterior Home Maintenance Tasks

There are also a few routine home maintenance tasks outside that you need to be aware of to keep your house in excellent shape.

Think of it this way: There’s no ‘check-engine’ light in a home the way there is on a car, so you should do at least an annual tour of the outside (and inside) of your house to make sure everything looks right.

Even if everything looks okay, you should still follow some routine home maintenance chores. For example, one of the most critically important home maintenance tasks — particularly in the fall — is to clean your rain gutters and downspouts to make sure they’re not clogged or blocked. If your gutters are clogged, then rain or snow can freeze and create an ice dam, which then may cause water damage inside your home.

When it comes to protecting your home from water damage, make sure the extensions on your downspout drains the water away from your home. The number one cause of basement flooding is from water flowing back into your house instead of draining away.

The “grade” or slope of your lawn is also important to keep an eye on. Regardless of whether your landscaping has been provided by your builder or you have added landscaping yourself, make sure to keep the grade sloping down so that water flows away from your house.

Another important outdoor home maintenance task is to clean your exterior dryer vent at lease once a year. This is one of the easiest ways for you to prevent a house fire.

Interior Home Maintenance Tasks

Inside, your home maintenance chores are mostly about keeping your home dry, your air quality good, and staying safe. If you have a sump pump, you should check it annually to be sure it will be effective if you need it.

It’s recommended that you check on your heating and air conditioning filter as soon as you move in. After that, check your filter on a regular basis to see if it needs replacing. This is especially important if there’s a lot of homes under construction around you. To help you remember, keep a note on your calendar or follow the go-to suggestion of “check your air filter when you pay your monthly utility bill.”

If you have a fireplace, one easy home maintenance task is to have it checked and cleaned at least once every few years. This is especially important if you use it frequently. To do so, you’ll want to hire a chimney inspector. In the long-run, it’s worth the cost.

A simple home maintenance task is to take care of your water heater.

At least once a year, it’s recommended that you drain about one gallon of water from your water heater to help remove the sediment. If you don’t follow this easy home maintenance task, you’re effectively diminishing the life of your water heater. This is a costly repair.

Hicks also recommends vacuuming your refrigerator coils to keep it running at optimal efficiency and checking your laundry hoses to make sure they’re not leaking.

For safety, it’s strongly recommended that you check your smoke, carbon monoxide, and radon gas detectors’ batteries at least twice a year. One tip to help you remember is to check these devices when you change your clocks in the spring and fall.

Another lesser known home maintenance task is to keep an eye on your GFCI-protected outlets monthly to make sure they’re functioning appropriately. This, too, will pay off in the long-run.

One final piece of advice for new homeowners as they near the end of their first anniversary in their new home. It’s very wise to hire a home inspector to check out your home again before your one-year warranty ends. Because if they find something you can send it to your builder to repair. If not, it’s coming out of your pocket.