Doing routine home maintenance checks throughout your house is one of the best ways to ensure the home is in tip top condition. Your home likely costs you a ton of money, so you want to do all that you can to protect your investment.
While we all know to do things like check to ensure everything is working mechanically and ensure to change furnace and A/C filters, there are also somethings that most of us might miss. Also, depending on where you live, there might be some things you don’t think to check simply because of where you live.
With that in mind, we are going to take a closer look at four home maintenance checks you might (but shouldn’t) forget to make in your California home.
Check the Exterior of Your Home
We often go through every room of our home to check for signs of damage or wear and tear, but we rarely go outside to check it out. While some people in harsher climates will check their roof, eaves, siding and yards for damage, those in the sunny state of California might not do that too frequently.
However, they should. Just because you don’t get hit with all that many storms, wear and tear can still accumulate on the exterior of your home. The roof is one place in particular that you should check out, especially as the wind and sun can damage the roof dramatically over time.
Check Your Heating
While the last thing on your mind on a hot summer day in California is to turn on the heat, you still need to ensure your furnace is in working condition. It can get deceptively cold in California at times, and you don’t want to get stuck without any heat.
Also, there is a chance that your furnace might actually be emitting too much carbon monoxide, so you should do routine checks to ensure everything is working correctly. Heating Santa Rosa and other California cities is the prime objective of some companies, so you should be able to find one fairly easily to help ensure your furnace is in the best shape possible.
Check For Water Issues
While California is often quite sunny, there have been some major rainfalls recently and this could easily continue and potentially become the norm. And with water capable of doing a ton of damage to your home, it is very important to ensure you are looking throughout your home for water damage after a big storm or rainfall.
Water damage can lead to mold, mildew and can even damage the structure of your entire home. In order to seek out water damage, look for warping or discoloration, or a musty smell.
Check the Trees and Shrubs in Your Yard
While this technically isn’t a maintenance check in or on your home, there is a good chance you have trees and or shrubs on your property. While many people just let these grow freely, that is often a bad idea. If they are small, sure, but if you have large trees in your yard, you should keep an eye out for them.
Wind and/or storms can often lead to a dying tree to fall down and if it falls on your home or car, could do a TON of damage. Thankfully, there are ways to discover if you have a dead or dying tree, so you will know if you should cut the tree down or at least trim it’s branches a little bit.