5 Overlooked Home Maintenance Tasks

12 June 2015
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Home ownership can be personally and even financially rewarding, but it also involves a lot of responsibility. While most home owners know about the more obvious home ownership tasks, other tasks are frequently overlooked. Continuing to overlook these tasks can eventually lead to expensive repairs or even the need to replace components of your home. Avoid this by being proactive about these five frequently overlooked home maintenance tasks:

Drain Cleaning

Your household drains help keep your household running smoothly, and a clogged drain or pipe can be a major headache. One way to help prevent clogs is to flush your kitchen and bathroom drains with a pot of boiling water each week. Limit the amount of food you allow to go down the kitchen drain, and place a drain guard in the shower to prevent clogs caused by hair.

It's also a good idea to have your main pipes professionally snaked and inspected once a year or so, in order to detect issues (such as tree roots growing into your pipes) while they are still relatively simple and cheap to fix.

Garage Door Maintenance

Your garage door is most likely the largest moving component of your whole house, and serves an important function, yet is one of those items that is often ignored until it needs major repairs. Inspecting your garage door each year, or hiring a garage door repair professional to do so for you, will ensure it works as it's supposed to for years to come.

An overly noisy, slow, or unresponsive garage door probably already needs repairs. Things to look for during an inspection include making sure the safety sensor is responsive, checking for loose bolts, and making sure all metal parts are well-lubricated.

Check Your Roof

Homeowners tend to take their roofs for granted, without stopping to think about how costly and inconvenient it would be if the roof needed major repairs. In order to keep your roof doing its job and avoid major issues in the future, it's best to have your roof inspected annually. You can hire a professional to do this, or tackle it yourself if you're not afraid of heights. Simply climb a ladder and look for the items on this roof inspection checklist, including missing shingles, loose nails, and cracks.

Maintain Your Refrigerator

Refrigerators are unsung heroes of the home, keeping all of your perishable food cold and unspoiled. Rather than neglecting your fridge until it needs expensive repairs or to be replaced, spend a little time maintaining it on a regular basis. Those coils behind the refrigerator that seem to be total magnets for dust and dirt should actually be cleaned regularly. Clean refrigerator coils will help the appliance run more efficiently.

You should also check the door seals to make sure they are still sealing properly, as they do tend to wear out over time from the refrigerator being opened and closed frequently.

Have Your Furnace and Air Conditioner Serviced

Many homeowners wait to call a furnace or air conditioner repair company until something is majorly wrong, but manufacturers recommend having furnaces and air conditioners serviced annually. Having them serviced each year prior to using them will help ensure they're running as efficiently as possible and detect minor issues before they turn into major ones.

During an annual servicing, furnace and air conditioning repair companies will inspect the units, clean them, troubleshoot, lubricate any moving parts, and tighten loose bolts.

By proactively tackling these overlooked home maintenance tasks, you will protect your investment and help ensure your family has a comfortable, well-functioning place to live. In order to keep things simple, just add these tasks to your calendar each year so you won't forget them.