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.
It’s critical that you regularly replace your Safety Harbor rental property’s air filters. These filters keep your property’s HVAC system clean and running efficiently. Because of this reason, it’s clear to see that changing the air filters in your rental home is an important part of seasonal maintenance. As the winter months draw near, furnaces start to work harder to keep out the cold as families tend to spend more time indoors. This is the reason why making sure your filters are clean is important. Now, there are many kinds of HVAC systems and they use different kinds of filters. So, depending on the specific model you have, 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. This sort of neglect would cause undue strain on your HVAC system, reducing both its life and the efficiency of the unit.
Fall would also be the perfect time to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. These devices need to be working well to make sure your tenants will be safe. Imagine if one of your smoke detectors stop functioning— say it ran out of batteries— and your property gets damaged in a fire and one of your tenants get hurt. You can be sure that you’re getting sued. In other words, it’s critical that these devices are kept working 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, and, for some of them, the smoke detectors in their homes failed to go off to warn them. 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, we have a water heater. It may be one of the most frequently used devices in a rental home but that doesn’t mean people remember it when they’re doing property maintenance tasks. It should not be overlooked. Cleaning your rental property’s water heater ensures that it lasts long and continues to work efficiently. 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 stay clear of these problems by simply flushing your water heater once every six months or so. It may take some time to finish the task, but it has to be done so you could 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 could result in expensive repairs in the future. But leaving it to your tenant to change or clean the filters, batteries, and water heater in your Safety Harbor 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 TradeWinds, 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. Contact us today to learn more.
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