Among the 4 seasons of the year, Fall is the best time to perform regular maintenance on some of the hardest-working devices in your rental property. By taking advantage of this season to do important interior maintenance items, you’re really also preparing your property to run safely and smoothly all winter long. These tasks include having filters, batteries, and water heaters checked and cleaned or replaced regularly. You need to do this to ensure the safety of your tenants and to make sure that your rental property is in top condition.
It’s crucial that you change your Central rental property’s air filters, and that you do it regularly. These filters keep your property’s HVAC system clean and running efficiently. This is the reason why changing air filters 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. For this reason, we can see the importance of keeping your filters clean. There are different types of HVAC systems, and some systems use different types of filters. Depending on what filter your 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 think that these maintenance tasks are best done by your tenant, there is a high likelihood that they’re going to forget to change the filters or not change them often enough. This sort of lapse in maintenance will cause strain on your HVAC system, resulting in a reduction of life and the efficiency of the unit.
Fall would also be the ideal time to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. You have to have these devices working well to keep your tenants safe. If you neglect to keep smoke detectors functioning properly, you may get sued should your property be damaged and/or one of your tenants get hurt in a fire. In other words, it’s critical that these devices are cared for.
There are smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that need their batteries changed every six to twelve months; others have lithium batteries that can last up to ten years— which is great because the useful life of a smoke or carbon monoxide detector is also ten years. Nevertheless, no matter what kind of battery your devices have, you should still make sure that the batteries are being tested on a regular basis, and replaced immediately when needed. Hundreds of people are injured or killed in house fires every year. The number of these tragedies could have been greatly reduced if the smoke detectors in their homes were working properly. If you give this task to your tenant, what guarantee do you have that they would do it? On top of that, they may even damage your property’s smoke detectors as they fiddle with them. This would lead to increased liability on your part and an additional expense to replace the devices.
Next, we have water heaters. Despite it being one of the most frequently used devices in a rental home, it’s often neglected when doing property maintenance tasks. 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.
These problems wouldn’t bother you if you just flush your water heater once every six months or so. It may take a bit of time to do it but it really is important. You have to do it to get the most out of your expensive water heater unit. This may seem like another thing you’d want your tenant to do. But if you let them clean your water heater, you risk a lot of things. They may not do it correctly and cause even more problems.
Neglecting these maintenance items can have serious consequences and you may have to pay additional costs for expensive repairs later on. But requesting that your tenant change or clean the filters, batteries, and water heater in your Central rental property is not the best option. While it is true that you could do the jobs yourself, the best option is still to get a company like Real Property Management Baton Rouge to manage all the property maintenance you need to have done. We have a full range of maintenance services that will keep your tenants safe and your property in good condition. With us by your side, you can be free to focus on growing your real estate investing business! For more information, feel free to contact us today.
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