Fall is definitely one of those superb times of the year to perform regular maintenance on some of the hardest-working devices in your rental property. Filters, batteries, and water heaters need to be fully checked and cleaned or replaced regularly to continue to keep your tenants safe or harm-free and your rental property in top shape. By making full use of the season to bring about these important interior maintenance items, you can aid in sustaining and keeping things running safely and smoothly all winter long.
So few things are more necessary than exchanging your Rochester rental property’s air filters periodically. These filters keep your property’s HVAC system clean and running efficiently. Thus, changing the air filters in your rental property is an important part of seasonal maintenance. As the winter months draw near, a lot of time is used inside the house, and furnaces start to work harder to keep out the cold. This makes securing that your filters are clean especially more significant. Conditional on which type of filter your HVAC system needs, you would need to change the filters as often as every 30 days, every three months, or even every six months. Although you may hope that your tenant would accomplish this chore for you, the risks of your tenant omitting or not changing the filters often enough are substantial. This may thoroughly generate strain on your HVAC system, diminishing the life and reducing the efficiency of the unit.
Fall is similarly an ideal time to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. These devices are critical to making certain that your tenants are safe and shielded from harm; failing to retain functioning smoke detectors in your rental property could cause you to get sued should your property get damaged or a tenant of yours gets hurt in a fire.
Many smoke and carbon monoxide detectors will need their batteries changed every six to twelve months; others have lithium batteries that can last up to ten years, which is actually the useful life of a smoke or carbon monoxide detector. Regardless of which kind of battery your devices have, you should make certain that the batteries are being tested and replaced on a regular basis. Hundreds of people are injured or killed in house fires every year, by reason that the smoke detectors in their homes were not operating properly. If you delegate this charge to your tenant, there is no surety that they will accomplish it. They may additionally break your property’s smoke detectors in the process of doing it, which leads to replacement costs, and increased liability.
Regardless of being among the most frequently used devices in a rental home, water heaters are frequently disregarded when performing property maintenance tasks. Nevertheless, properly cleaning your rental property’s water heater is a significant component of keeping it going adequately and successfully. Over time, sediment builds up in the tank of a water heater, making it less efficient and even leading to clogged water lines.
These complexities and problems can be thoroughly dodged by flushing your water heater once every six months or so. Admittedly, though this chore can require time, it is a necessary factor of maximizing the use of your expensive water heater unit. Though insisting for your tenant to clean the water heater may appear like the right idea, by doing this you put on the line a task that can be terribly or unsuitably performed. And lastly, a tenant may generate more problems than they can handle.
Neglecting these maintenance items can have serious consequences and can bring on expensive repairs down the line. Hence, requiring your tenant to change or clean the filters, batteries, and water heater in your Rochester rental property is not the best option. Despite the fact that you could accomplish the work yourself, your ideal alternative is to engage the assistance of a company like Real Property Management Metro Detroit to attend to all your property maintenance for you. Our full range of maintenance services will preserve the safety of your tenants and your property in a good state, allowing you to work freely on expanding your real estate investing business. Contact us today for more useful information.
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