Homes in HRM
Your home for Real Estate Services within
the Halifax Regional Municipality!
Sheila Banser
Phone: 902.830.8757
Fax: 902.455.6738
E-mail: sheilabanser@royallepage.ca
General Real Estate Articles
Maintain your Home - Protect Your Investment!
Maintaining Your Home is a time consuming, labour intensive and occasionally expensive exercise, however, there are a few specific things that you can do on an annual basis that can help to prolong the more expensive elements of your home. Certainly, four of the most expensive elements of your home to try to replace are:
- Your Roof
- Your Windows
- Your Furnace
- Your Foundation
There are simple, and inexpensive
things you can do on an annual basis that will go a long way towards maintaining
and extending the life of these elements of your home. Have you ever
seen a roof with Moss all over it? This is caused by too much shade and
moisture on your shingles – almost always a result of trees growing over
top of your roof. One of the simplest (and cheapest) things you can to
do maintain the integrity of your roof shingles is to get up and cut back
those tree limbs. This helps with two things actually – it keeps the
constant shade off your roof, eliminating moss, and also helps to keep
your gutters clean – no more constant climbing up to get the sludge and
leaves out! Your Windows are the portals out to the world, but you must
remember that they are also where the world comes in to you! A quick
walk around your home to check the seals, and even resealing or recaulking
your windows, on an annual basis will ensure that you don’t get wind and
water into places that you don’t want! Your Furnace is definitely something
that you probably don’t want to take apart and maintain yourself – it
is much better left to the professionals, but having your furnace checked
once a year is a good idea – it is much better to see your furnace repair
person for an hour in the fall than it is to get that bill after seeing
them for a whole day in February! You can check with your preferred home
heating company, click here to find links to companies that will do annual
checkups on your furnace. One more thing… Having your ducts cleaned?
Probably not worth the money unless you have done some major Reno’s in
the last year! Save your money for a nice dinner! Finally, your foundation
– by far the major point of concern with home buyers. To maintain your
foundation is really a matter of maintaining the lay of the land around
your home. You should have a negative grade (ground should be sloping
away) from all sides of your home. After a good rainfall, take a quick
walk around your home and make sure that there are no puddles of water
sitting around your home next to your foundation. If there is, you should
attempt to build up the ground near the home at that point so that rainwater
runs off safely away from the Foundation. In fact, almost every basement
leak can be fixed by simply getting the water away from the foundation
with better grading.
All of these solutions put together will cost you less than $200 a year
to do, and could save you tens of thousands of dollars in
the long term!
The benefits of maintaining your home are both financial, and peace of mind!
All of these solutions put together will cost you less than $200 a year to do, and could save you tens of thousands of dollars in the long run!
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